Public Health Expenditure and Under-five Mortality in Nigeria: An Overview for Policy Intervention

Abstract

AIM: This study looked at the contribution of the health expenditure by the government on under-five mortality in Nigeria. METHODS: The autoregressive distribution lag technique was employed in this study in examining the long-run effect of public health expenditure on under-five mortality in Nigeria. Data were sourced from the World Development Indicators for the period 1985–2017. RESULTS: Results from the study showed that though public health expenditure is statistically significant, it showed a positive relationship with the under-five mortality. CONCLUSION: The implication of this result is that 1 unit increase in public health expenditure would improve increase under-five mortality rate by 1.56 units. However, in the Nigerian context, this can be better explained by the lack of proper health-fund coordination and other factors such as maternal education. Therefore, the study concluded by recommending that proper health-fund coordination should be put in place to ensure that budget allocated to the health sector is being spent properly.