Impact of Public Health Expenditure on Infant and Under-five Mortality in Tanzania (1995-2013): An Application of Bayesian Approach.

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the impact of public health expenditure on health outcomes (infant and under five mortality rate) in Tanzania over the period 1995 to 2013. Per capital GDP as an indicator of income level and improved sanitation facilities were used as explanatory variables. A full Bayesian time series approach based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) was used to estimate the impact of public health expenditure on health outcomes (infant and under five mortality). The results shows that, despite changing patterns on government health expenditure over the period 1995 to 2013, still government health expenditure had no impact on health outcomes (infant and under five mortality) in Tanzania. The results further shows that, the mean for income levels represented by (GDP per capital) had positive significant effect on both infant and under-five mortality decline. The failure to bring impact on health outcomes (infant and under five mortality) was probably due to its low level of public health spending. The paper recommends the policy that aim to increase GDP per capital and public health expenditure. Since public health expenditure is still low, re-prioritisation is also needed in the public expenditure system for resource allocation during budgeting to favour health budget to be given first priority.

Keywords: Bayesian Approach, Health Outcomes, Government Health Expenditure