Healthcare Budget Allocation and Economic Growth Among County Governments in the North Rift Region in Kenya

Abstract

Economic growth and development are often seen to occur when a country or state guarantees that the available resources are distributed across a wide range of productive economic units. Investment in the health of a country's citizens is crucial since they are the driving force of economic growth and its human capital. A diseased population is the epitome of inefficiency. It is delegated to the counties, but despite international obligations such as the Abuja declaration requiring the national government to devote at least 15% of its total yearly allocation to healthcare, Kenya's healthcare budgetary allocation remains below the minimum. Despite this, the government's healthcare spending has increased. As a consequence, researchers in Kenya's North Rift Economic Block attempted to quantify the economic effect of health budget allocation. Following Solow Growth, Swan Wagner's Increase in State Spending and Buchanan Theory of Healthcare Spending, the study was done. A census was conducted in Kenya's North Rift Economic Block's eight counties using descriptive research. Between 2016 and 2020, researchers collected data for this study. In addition to descriptive statistics and panel regression analysis, SPSS was employed for statistical analysis. The county's gross product was shown to have a statistically significant positive link with healthcare budgetary allocation and internal appropriations. However, there is no statistically significant association between national budget share allocation and gross domestic product for the county. Healthcare budgetary allocation was shown to have a positive and substantial link with county economic development, as was the case with counties' own source income, according to the regression findings. Economic growth in the North Rift Region Economic Block Counties was positively associated with the national budgetary allocation share, but the association was not statistically significant. Investment in North Rift Region Economic Block county governments is impeding both healthcare and economic progress, thus the county governments' administrations should spend more monetary resources toward health care activities so that the counties may expand economically. Also planned was an investigation of how healthcare financial allocations affect the economic growth of counties, which included qualitative views and opinions from county officials as well as ordinary residents.