Public health spending, per-capita and life expectancy in Ghana.

Abstract

The study explored the practical effect of health expenditure per capita and per capita income on life expectancy in Ghana. The investigation utilized annual time-series secondary data from 2000 to 2022, sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI). Variables such as life expectancy (LE), per-capita income (K), public health spending per capita (HE), birth rate per 1000 people (BR), employment to population ratio (EP), CO2 emissions per capita (CC), percentage of total population with access to safe drinking water (AD) and access to safe sanitation services (AS) were considered. Additionally, the study delved into the annual patterns of life expectancy, per-capita income, public health spending per capita, percentage of total population with access to safe drinking water and access to safe sanitation services. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag cointegration technique was employed to assess the short and longterm relationships among the variables. Before this analysis, a unit root test was conducted to determine the stationarity of the variables. The EViews Statistical/Econometric package facilitated the analysis, with graphical representations illustrating the variables pattern. The findings shows that current health expenditure per capita negatively correlated with expectancy rate in years whiles per-capita income is positively correlated with life expectancy rate. All variables modeled were cointegrated. It was also found that there is direct and significant relationship among birthrate, access to safe sanitation services and life expectancy whiles CO2 emissions in tons per-capita was found to be negatively correlated with life expectancy. The study recommends the implementation of policies and initiatives geared towards prioritized health funding and efficient resource allocation as well as policies aimed at improving incomes of individuals.