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Broader health coverage is good for the nation's health: evidence from country level panel data
Author(s) -
MorenoSerra Rodrigo,
Smith Peter C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/rssa.12048
Subject(s) - instrumental variable , causality (physics) , panel data , demographic economics , variable (mathematics) , health indicator , environmental health , set (abstract data type) , population health , population , public economics , actuarial science , business , economics , medicine , econometrics , computer science , mathematical analysis , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , programming language
Summary Progress towards universal health coverage involves providing people with access to needed health services without entailing financial hardship and is often advocated on the grounds that it improves population health. The paper offers econometric evidence on the effects of health coverage on mortality outcomes at the national level. We use a large panel data set of countries, examined by using instrumental variable specifications that explicitly allow for potential reverse causality and unobserved country‐specific characteristics. We employ various proxies for the coverage level in a health system. Our results indicate that expanded health coverage, particularly through higher levels of publicly funded health spending, results in lower child and adult mortality, with the beneficial effect on child mortality being larger in poorer countries.