A Silent Crisis: The Impact of Public Health Expenditure on Malnutrition Prevalence in Children Aged Below Five in the Philippines

This study mainly aims to determine whether public health expenditures have been effective in reducing malnutrition among children aged below five in the Philippines. The researchers construct a Grossman (1972) model-based health production function, which treats economic, social, and environmental factors as determinants of nutritional status. OLS estimates show that an increase in food security rates, a decrease in poverty incidence rates, and an increase in the level of urbanization significantly reduce stunting rates. However, no statistically significant relationship exists between the aforementioned independent variables and underweight and wasting rates (aside from the level of urbanization and wasting). In all regression models, the coefficient estimate for public health expenditure is valued near zero and is statistically insignificant, implying that government spending on health has been insubstantial and ineffective in reducing malnutrition prevalence.

The role of access to electricity, female education, and public health expenditure on female health outcomes: evidence from SAARC-ASEAN countries

Background The importance of the status of female health should have research priority due to the unique medical needs of women. Hence this paper attempts to explore the nexus of access to electricity, female education, and public health expenditure with female health outcomes in the SAARC-ASEAN countries. Methods Using the data of 2002–2018, and applying the cross-sectional dependence test, Modified Wald test, Wooldridge test, the Panel corrected standard error (PCSE) model, the Feasible generalized least square (FGLS) model, and the pair-wise Granger causality test, the robust outcomes on female health are found. Results Access to electricity, female education rate, public health expenditure, economic growth, and immunization rate, all have a positive effect on female life expectancy at birth, and a negative effect on the female adult mortality rate. The urbanization rate has a significantly positive impact on female life expectancy at birth but an insignificant impact on female adult mortality rate. The one-way causal relationship between the variables are also revealed. Conclusions All the results are rational and have important milestone for the health sector. The health status of females should be improved and protected by formulating effective policies on access to electricity, female education, public health expenditure, immunization, economic growth, and urbanization.

The effect of the quality of institutions on the relationship between public health expenditure and the infant mortality rate: evidence from the PVAR (X) and PSTR approaches

Infant mortality is a major health problem in developing countries. It is an important indicator of a country's public health as it goes hand in hand with socio-economic conditions and many others. Public health spending has been committed to reducing this scourge. This has led to the completion of numerous studies which have yielded mixed results. The main objective of this study is to test the effect of public health expenditure (% GDP) on the infant mortality rate, taking into account the role that institutional quality can play. To achieve this, we use two approaches which are the autoregressive vector panel model with exogenous variables (PVAR (X)) and the smooth threshold regression model (PSTR) on annual data covering the period 2002-2016 and covering 37 African countries. Sub-Saharan. Our main results through the PVAR (X) reveal that in the absence of institutional variables, public health expenditure has a negative and significant effect on the infant mortality rate, whereas, in the presence of the various institutional variables, this effect is still negative but is no longer significant. Our results show that the presence of institutions halves the weight of public health expenditure in explaining the infant mortality rate. In addition, our results show through the PSTR that there is a certain level of institutional qualities that these countries must achieve for public health expenditure to positively affect infant mortality rates. These thresholds oscillate for all the institutional variables around 7%. Taking institutional variables into account will help reduce infant mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries.

LONG-TERM MODEL AND MONTE CARLO SIMULATION OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH EXPENDITURE IN BULGARIA

Purpose: The aim of the study is to build a long-term model and conduct a Monte Carlo simulation of the public health expenditure (PHE) of Bulgaria with the gross domestic product (GDP) as an independent variable. Material/Methods: Statistical models are used for modeling the long-term dependence between the macroeconomic dynamic rows, testing of hypotheses of stationarity (Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests), for serial autocorrelation and others. Results: There is a well-defined, statistically significant long-term relationship between public health expenditure and gross domestic product. The long-term model of health expenditure has an estimate of the cointegration constant of 1.023 (p-value < 0.05). Monte Carlo simulations are presented with 1 000, 2 000 and 3 000 experiments, generated based on the normal distribution of the input variable. Conclusions: In the period after the year 1990, a well-defined long-term relationship between public health expenditure and GDP exists. The Monte Carlo simulation can be regarded as a reliable instrument for studying the most likely fluctuations in health expenditure caused by the GDP.

Drivers of Public Health Expenditure in Kenya: Do Structural Breaks Matter?

Health forms the basic foundation of the quality of human life, which is an ultimate ingredient towards the productivity and efficiency of an economy. The rapid growth of health expenditure has emerged as an enormous concern for many households and governments globally. This study used timeseries data for the period 1985–2018 in unearthing the drivers of healthcare expenditure in Kenya, with a central focus on the role of health shocks. The study also sought to assess whether structural breaks mattered in a healthcare expenditure model. A public healthcare expenditure model was estimated using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The findings revealed the presence of a long-run relationship between public health expenditure and its determinants in Kenya. Population growth rate and CO2 emissions (proxy to respiratory illnesses) were found to significantly and positively determine public health expenditure in the short run. This impact was insignificant in the long run. Similarly, GDP per capita and the number of HIV/AIDs infections positively and significantly determined public health expenditure in the long run. A key finding of this study highlighted the importance of testing for structural breaks in analyzing a time-series healthcare expenditure model. Previously, this is something that has been largely omitted in the Kenyan healthcare context. The structural break dummy variables significantly determined public health expenditure and, therefore, their incorporation in the model yielded a more accurate forecast with better econometric estimates. The findings will be useful in informing the government’s health budgetary allocation as well as the design of appropriate shock mitigation policies. This is paramount for the country in achieving not only Universal Health Coverage but also high-quality medical care to its citizens as envisioned in the ‘Big Four Agenda’ government priorities.

Convergence in public health expenditure across the Sub-Saharan African countries: does club convergence matter?

Background Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that currently face enormous healthcare challenges have implemented national health policies focusing on regional or international health commitments. These health commitments generally promote new healthcare financing policies (e.g., health insurance, user fee exemption and results-based financing) with the objective of providing ever-larger population cohorts with human capital and better health in particular. To achieve this, governments must involve themselves more fully in their respective healthcare sectors through the mobilisation of public funding. Objective This paper aims to examine convergence in health expenditure throughout SSA. The findings of club convergence will allow a robust comparison of health indicators between countries and will be suitable for the adjustment of health policies to foster the efficiency of such policies at the regional and/or country level. Such findings could also help with the conception and implementation of health policies at the regional level. Methods We used the methodology of convergence analysis based on dynamic factor modelling leading to the logt regression to test for full convergence, club convergence and club clustering of health expenditure on a balanced panel of 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa spanning the period from 2000 to 2016. Results Overall, our results do not support the hypothesis that all SSA countries converge to a single equilibrium state regarding public health expenditure. When testing for club convergence, the results highlight eight convergence clubs and one group of diverging countries. Indeed, performing the club clustering algorithm reveals the existence of three convergence clubs and the diverging group. The three clubs consist of 12, 14 and 14 members, respectively, where convergence is found to occur among different regional economic organisations. Conclusion Our findings indicate that SSA governments should increase spending on healthcare in order to align their healthcare systems with a global convergence model. To foster the convergence to a single equilibrium state in public health expenditure, attention could be paid to strengthening integration within the various regional economic organisations and to the coordination and integration of healthcare policies within and across convergence clubs throughout SSA.

PUBLIC HEALTH EXPENDITURE AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN NIGERIA

One of the numerous responsibilities of the government of any country is to invest in the various sectors of the economy. This should, however, be channeled to the appropriate sectors, such as the health sector, that will lead to a continual growth of the country. It is in the light of this, that this study looks at government spending on the health sector and its effect on infant mortality rate (INFM) in Nigeria. Health is central to the well-being of the citizens. This study made an attempt to provide empirical evidence of the impact of public health expenditure on infant mortality rate in Nigeria between 1991 and 2018 using time series data. The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) analytical method was used to examine the relationships. Various robustness checks were carried out to ensure the reliability of the result for policy makers. Findings revealed that all variables employed positively impacted INFM except for Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus (DPT) immunization and female literacy rate. It was therefore recommended that more public enlightenments on the importance of taking DPT immunization for infants should be embarked upon for the target audience to be able to produce a positive effect, nursing mothers should be educated more on the need to take good care of their children especially at the early stage and not leave chance to the faith of the day care, all in the name of being literate and answering the call of their job at the expense of their parental role among others.

Does intense electoral competition increase the government health expenditure in EAs?

<p></p><p>Does intense electoral competition in electoral autocracies (EAs) increase the government health expenditure? Previous studies on EAs and public health expenditure focus on the presence of multiparty elections in EAs as a significant determinant on the expenditure. Most of elections in EAs often are unfair because those are for the victory of dictators; hence. multiparty elections <i>per se</i> do not capture well-known impact of elections, such as the electoral competition increasing health expenditure. Some EAs pay health expenditure less than others even though electoral competition is high. This paper analyzes the effect of electoral competition on the government health expenditure with the balanced panel data of 20 EAs from 2001 to 2017. There are two rival arguments on how electoral competition affect the expenditure according to previous studies; (a) a high level of electoral competition indicates a difficulty of dictatorial winning in elections. Autocrats, hence, gather various demands including health issues from voters, and can increase the government health expenditure; (b) Autocrats pursue the victory in elections. Pork and personal benefits to voters rather than programmed policies are helpful for the victory. Therefore, there is no incentive for autocrats to provide government health expenditure to voters when the level of electoral competition is high. Empirical findings demonstrate that electoral competition in EAs lead the decrease of government health expenditure. This paper concludes that electoral competition does not increase the public health expenditure; the higher level of competition in autocracies does not mean that voters can exert their power to autocrats to realize policies.</p><br><p></p>