Gender Health Inequalities in South Asia: A Case for Higher Public Health Expenditure

Global Gender Gap rankings for the South Asian region have declined between 2018-2023. Furthermore, ranking the four sub-indices in the global gender gap index also shows a deteriorating trend. The lowest gender gap is in the health and survival sub-index, and the highest gender gaps are in economic participation and opportunities. Nevertheless, the highest rank decline is for the sub-index health and survival. Life expectancy and mortality rates are the two indicators included in this subindex, and they have shown substantial improvement over time. On the contrary, malnutrition and anaemia for women in South Asia have been increasing. Despite the low per capita income levels, the out-of-pocket health expenditures range between 50 to 70 per cent of the total health expenditure in these countries. In this context, this paper investigates the impact of public health expenditure on selected health outcomes for women. The panel regression results show that between 1998-2022, public health expenditure significantly reduced the mortality rates. The reduction has been more in the case of male mortality, whereas the impact of public health expenditure on women's malnutrition and anaemia has been low and insignificant. Moreover, private health expenditures have a larger significant impact on all health outcomes. The paper concludes that more decentralised allocation for primary health expenditures is required to improve women’s access to public health provisions and, therefore, health outcomes.