Abstract:
The study explored the practical effect of health expenditure per capita and per capita
income on life expectancy in Ghana. The investigation utilized annual time-series
secondary data from 2000 to 2022, sourced from the World Development Indicators
(WDI). Variables such as life expectancy (LE), per-capita income (K), public health
spending per capita (HE), birth rate per 1000 people (BR), employment to population
ratio (EP), CO2 emissions per capita (CC), percentage of total population with access
to safe drinking water (AD) and access to safe sanitation services (AS) were considered.
Additionally, the study delved into the annual patterns of life expectancy, per-capita
income, public health spending per capita, percentage of total population with access
to safe drinking water and access to safe sanitation services. The Autoregressive
Distributed Lag cointegration technique was employed to assess the short and longterm
relationships among the variables. Before this analysis, a unit root test was
conducted to determine the stationarity of the variables. The EViews
Statistical/Econometric package facilitated the analysis, with graphical representations
illustrating the variables pattern. The findings shows that current health expenditure per
capita negatively correlated with expectancy rate in years whiles per-capita income is
positively correlated with life expectancy rate. All variables modeled were cointegrated.
It was also found that there is direct and significant relationship among birthrate, access
to safe sanitation services and life expectancy whiles CO2 emissions in tons per-capita
was found to be negatively correlated with life expectancy. The study recommends the
implementation of policies and initiatives geared towards prioritized health funding and
efficient resource allocation as well as policies aimed at improving incomes of
individuals.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Finance and Policy Management,
School of Business, submitted to the School of
Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment of
the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Science
(Development Finance)
in the University of Education, Winneba