IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nwe/eajour/y2025i1p190-205.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revisiting the Role of Health Financing and Workforce on Public Health Outcomes in Low-, Middle- and High-Income Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Samandar Khan

    (Department of Economics, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan)

  • Alvina Sabah Idrees

    (Department of Economics, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan)

Abstract

The role of health financing and healthcare workforce on public health outcomes is undeniable. The present study examines the role of domestic government health expenditure, private out-of-pocket health expenditure, physicians, pharmaceutical and nursing staff on life expectancy and under-five infant mortality rate. The comparison is made across three income groups i.e., high, middle-, and low- income countries. For estimation, panel data econometric techniques are applied using macro-level data based on 10 years (2010-2019). The Driscoll-Kraay and Prais-Winsten estimations are robust to heteroscedasticity and serial correlation. The empirical results show that health financing and healthcare workforce are positively related to life expectancy and negative with infant mortality rate. Furthermore, the marginal impact of health financing and workforce differ across countries by different income groups. The impact of pharmacists is higher in middle income countries. In high-income countries the impact of physicians is greater as compared to nurses. Lastly, the marginal impact of nurses among low-income countries is higher in reducing the under-5 mortality rate than increasing the life expectancy.

Suggested Citation

  • Samandar Khan & Alvina Sabah Idrees, 2025. "Revisiting the Role of Health Financing and Workforce on Public Health Outcomes in Low-, Middle- and High-Income Countries," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 1, pages 190-205, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwe:eajour:y:2025:i:1:p:190-205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.unwe.bg/doi/eajournal/2025.1/EA.2025.1.10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public health; mortality; health financing; health professionals;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nwe:eajour:y:2025:i:1:p:190-205. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vanya Lazarova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/unweebg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.