Abstract:
The study set out to investigate the effect of public health expenditure on child mortality in Nigeria using secondary data from 1980 to 2011. The study employed covariance structure methodology in modeling infant mortality rate, under-five mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate against per capita health spending and controlled for per capita income, access to health care facilities, per capita education expenditure and the percentage of delivery by a health professional in Nigeria. Results obtained show that per capita health expenditure has no significant effect on infant mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate in Nigeria. Results also show that per capita health expenditure has significant effect on under-five mortality rate in Nigeria. The study equally found that per capita education expenditure has significant effect on under-five mortality rate in Nigeria. More importantly, the study found that percentage of delivery by a health professional has significant effect on infant mortality rate, under-five mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate in Nigeria. Finally, the study concludes that health care expenditure is far from the optimum which at present cannot meet the teeming population health challenges and recommends that government should increase and sustain health expenditure especially on programmes aimed at reducing child mortality as it is this study’s belief that child mortality could significantly reduce with increased health expenditure in Nigeria.
