Household National Health Insurance Subscription and Learning Outcomes of Poor Children in Ghana

This paper investigates the effect of poor households’ subscription to National Health Insurance Scheme on their children's school performance. Resource-poor households are often vulnerable to low investment in education. This is particularly the case where expenditure on health can trade off educational spending and compromise children’s academic performance. This paper argues that poor households’ subscription to National Health Insurance Scheme could reduce their health expenditure and consequentially increase educational spending to improve their children’s school performance. This proposition was investigated using data from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey. The Instrumental Variable method was employed to address possible endogeneity problems between health insurance subscription and children’s learning outcomes. Additionally, the propensity score matching technique was used to validate the results. The results show that poor households’ subscription to National Health Insurance Scheme improves their children’s learning outcomes in Ghana. The results, therefore, imply that universal health coverage among the poor could enhance human capital development in developing countries.