Understanding the effectiveness of government health expenditure in improving health equity: Preliminary evidence from global health expenditure and child mortality rate

Governments around the world are committed to enhance health equity, but the effectiveness of government health expenditure in improving health equity is still full of controversy. To respond to it, this study investigates the influence of government health expenditure (including domestic government health expenditure and foreign‐sourced health expenditure distributed by government) on child mortality rate across the world, in doing so evaluates its role in improving the social equity of health outcome. Using data of health expenditure and child mortality rate across the world (2000‐2015), empirical results show that both domestic government and foreign‐sourced health expenditure can greatly reduce the child mortality rate of families in rural areas with the lower level of maternal education and in the medium or low‐income stratum. Further, even though domestic government health expenditure is found more effective to reduce the child mortality rate of males, foreign‐sourced health expenditure can help cover such gender bias due to making a greater reduction in child mortality rate of females.