International Institute for Population Sciences
Deemed to be University (An Autonomous Organization of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India)

This macro level study attempts to find out the association between health expenditure and health outcome in India in 2019 by taking data of 21 major states from different sources. We collected data related to health outcome variables such as infant mortality rate, life expectancy at birth and DALY from sample registration system and Global Burden of Disease data and data related to health expenditure from National Health Accounts and data regarding other confounding variables from Rural Health Statistics and Annual publication of Reserve Bank of India. To find out the association we used the method of pairwise correlation and scatter plot and result showed that there is significant correlation between per capita health expenditure with female life expectancy and infant mortality. To know the health and health expenditure status in India, boxplots are drawn and it revealed that both the infant mortality and female life expectancy are improving over time while health expenditure shows fluctuations even though in general it increases. By taking panel data from 2014 to 2019 from Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation we fitted random effect model to study the impact of change in health expenditure on health outcome and found that change in per capita health expenditure has a significant impact on infant mortality rate and female life expectancy. The measure of Concentration Index investigates that health is improving in states having higher health expenditure as compared to states having lower health expenditure. The study suggests increase in health expenditure together with its proper distribution have an impact in improving health in India.