External publications

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

Nshakira-Rukundo, Emmanuel / Essa Chanie Mussa / Nicolas Gerber / Joachim von Braun
External Publications (2020)

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.