Healthcare Financing and Health Outcomes: Analysis of Oil-Producing Countries in Africa

Abstract

The major concern of the study is on healthcare financing and health outcomes in the major oil-producing countries in Africa. We used the data sorted from World Development Indicators (WDI) to identify the effect of four different health expenditures on the rate of mortalities on maternal, under-five, infant, neonatal and life expectancy at birth through random and fixed-effect models. This paper also takes cognizance of the environmental variable (pollution) that is common to the top 10 oil-producing countries in Africa. Our findings showed that high health expenditure from government, private and external sources improved health outcomes, while health expenditure from out of pocket is detrimental to health outcomes. Also, the environmental variable has a negative impact on life expectancy. The outcome of the paper indicated that there is a need to reduce environmental pollution, increase health expenditure from government, private, external sources and reduce out of pocket payments in the selected areas.