Public Health Expenditure and Maternal Mortality Rate in Sub-Saharan African Countries

Abstract The study looked at public health spending and maternal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The specific objectives were to: investigate the impact of public health expenditure on maternal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa; determine whether there is a disparity in the impact of public health expenditure on maternal mortality across four sub-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa; and determine the nature of the causal relationship between public health spending and maternal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study employed the Panel ARDL, the Panel Co-integration Test, and the Panel Granger Causality Test to achieve the objectives. According to the findings, an increase in public health investment corresponds to a decrease in maternal death rates in sub-Saharan Africa. The regional analysis shows that public health expenditure has a long-run significant and negative impact on maternal mortality rate in the Central and Western regions of sub-Saharan Africa countries. Whereas, results from Southern and Eastern regions showed a positive and insignificant impact of public health spending on maternal mortality rate in the long run. The study reveals a unidirectional relationship between public health expenditure and maternal mortality rate with causality running from public health expenditure to maternal mortality rate and no causality running from maternal mortality rate to public health expenditure in both the full SSA sample and in the South SSA sample. The result also revealed a bidirectional relationship between public health expenditure and maternal mortality rate in Central sub-Saharan Africa both in the short-run and the long-run while there was no evidence of causality in East and West sub-Saharan Africa. The study therefore recommends targeted healthcare spending and suggests that investments in public health, education, and economic development can effectively lower maternal mortality rates.