Narain Sinha and Mothusi Tsheki
University of Botswana, Southern Africa
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Prim Health Care
Convergence of health expenditure and health outcomes explains whether the countries with lower expenditure on health or poor health outcome are performing better relative to the countries with higher expenditure or higher outcome. This study attempts to investigate convergence of health expenditure and health outcomes using spatial dependence models and Club convergence. The result show that among the 13 Southern African Development Community members, the countries form two clubs in which eleven are converging and two with the lowest health expenditure per capita are converging separately. Individually, the countries which are converging at the highest rates are Mozambique at 36% and Malawi at 35%. Testing the panel data, there is some evidence of convergence among the countries without the use of spatial models at 0.1%. Using spatial dependence models, it shows that there are some dependence effects in the region which is consistent with countries in the same region. The spatial models show that there is spatial dependence in the region and is influenced by the geographical location of the countries. Health outcomes are also seen to be converging using spatial models with HIV prevalence converging at 1.2% in the spatial error model and 1.1% in the spatial lag model. Similarly, both the life expectancy show 0.5% convergence considering both spatial error and spatial lag models.
E-mail: sinhan@mopipi.ub.bw
