Impact of voluntary community-based health insurance on child stunting: evidence from rural Uganda

in: Social Science & Medicine 245, article 112738

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112738
Information

While community-based health insurance increasingly becomes part of the health financing landscape in developing countries, there is still limited research about its impacts on health outcomes. Using cross-sectional data from rural south-western Uganda, we apply a two-stage residual inclusion instrumental variables method to study the impact of insurance participation on child stunting in under-five children. We find that one year of a household's participation in community-based health insurance was associated with a 4.3 percentage point less probability of stunting. Children of two years or less dominated the effect but there were also statistically significant benefits of enrolling in insurance after a child's birth. The expansion of community-based health insurance might have more dividends to improving health, in addition to financial protection and service utilisation in rural developing countries.

Über den Autor

Rukundo, Emmanuel Nshakira

Entwicklungsökonomie

Weitere Expert*innen zu diesem Thema

Faus Onbargi, Alexia

Politikwissenschaft