Private health care expenditure and child health outcomes in the world's poorest countries

Empirical studies investigating the direct effects of private health expenditure on child health outcomes for the world's poorest countries are rare. This study attempts to fill this gap. The methodology includes empirical estimations of cross-country annual data for the period 1995-2010 for several low-income countries. The results obtained through fixed-effects estimation provide strong evidence that private health care spending has the expected negative and statistically significant effect on neonatal, infant and under-five mortality rates. The findings also reveal that other than private health care spending, income, nutrition, urbanization, family size, immunization against measles, and access to an improved water supply and sanitation as other strong determinants of neonatal, infant and under-five mortality rates. Some policy implications are drawn.