title: Health expenditures, health outcomes and the role of good governance.
abstract: This paper examines the relationship between country health spending and selected health outcomes (infant mortality and child mortality), using data from 133 low and middle-income countries for the years 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2006. Health spending has a significant effect on reducing infant and under-5 child mortality with an elasticity of 0.13 to 0.33 for infant mortality and 0.15 to 0.38 for under-5 child mortality in models estimated using fixed effects methods (depending on models employed). Government health spending also has a significant effect on reducing infant and child mortality and the size of the coefficient depends on the level of good governance achieved by the country, indicating that good governance increases the effectiveness of health spending. This paper contributes to the new evidence pointing to the importance of investing in health care services and the importance of governance in improving health outcomes.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Marwa.farag@usask.ca
authors.forename: Marwa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Farag
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Nandakumar
authors.forename: Stanley
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wallack
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hodgkin
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gaumer
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Erbil
mesh_terms: D001723:Birth Rate; D002648:Child; D046688:Child Mortality; D003906:Developing Countries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014943:Global Health; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors