Public health expenditure and its outcomes a comparative study of Indian states

Abstract

Enhancement of health of the people is one of the major objectives of the process of development. The present study has been carried out to examine the efficiency of public health expenditure. For analyzing the inter-state disparities in public health expenditure, Gini-Coefficient has been used. It was found that When Health expenditure was compared between HDI states, it was found that low HDI states spent less on health as compared to the high HDI states. Using factor analysis, health index has been constructed. The result showed that the performance of states either they belonged to high HDI category or medium HDI category or low HDI category; their performance had improved over the time. In the end, for measuring the health efficiency, Stochastic Frontier Approach had been used. It was found that the health outcome efficiency is directly related to per capita health expenditure and per capita state GDP and increased with literacyrate and water and sanitation decreases with proportion of rural masses. Therefore, policy interventions are required from both centre and states to improve the performance of states in achieving better health status. newline