Macro-economic and public health expenditures in Kenya

Abstract

The demographic, people’s working lives and habits currently experienced in Kenya dictates that future public health care expenditure will be increasing, both as percentage of GDP and of total government outlays. Furthermore, it is expected to continue growing to the next decade because of the growing ageing populations and growing public expectations on the accessibility and quality of care. In this paper we aimed to understand the trajectory of health expenditure and the factors associated with the growth of total health expenditure in the country. We estimated the determinants of aggregate health care expenditure function for Kenya by applying a co integration test on a time series data from 1980-2012. We linked per capita income, exchange rates and total health personnel in an econometric model, and it was apparent that the per capita income and exchange rates explained the growing health care expenditure in Kenya well.