Convergence of Health Expenditure and Health Outcomes in Ecowas Countries

Full Text	Pdf
Author	Olalekan Oyedele, Abayomi Adebayo
ISSN	2307-2466
On Pages	46-53
Volume No.	4
Issue No.	2
Issue Date	April 01, 2020
Publishing Date	April 01, 2020
Keywords	Health expenditure, health outcomes, convergence, ECOWAS countries

Abstract

The study examined the convergence of health expenditures as well as health outcomes for a group of Economic Community of West African States using annual data between 1995 and 2011. We employed beta convergence and Johansen (1998) Co-integration technique to investigate convergence in health expenditure and health outcomes. The evidence from our results showed that the variable that measures the speed of convergence in health expenditure among member of ECOWAS region is positive and significant for both absolute and conditional convergence which indicated that there is no convergence in health expenditure. Divergence in health expenditure indicates that there are differences across countries in health expenditure which direct each country to converge to its own steady state. However, the study found evidence of convergence in health outcomes. Convergence in health outcomes shows that health outcomes variables move towards the same direction for member states. The result obtained from Cointegration test also confirms divergence in health expenditure and convergence in health outcomes for this region. The implication of these findings is that health challenges facing this region may continue, if member states are not ready to improve on resources allocated to health. Therefore the study suggested that policy makers should be more committed to regional policy especially in the area of resources allocated to health in their countries.

Back