How much does health care spending affect child mortality?
Background
One of the most used measures of the health of a population within a given country is the child mortality rate. There are many factors that can affect the child mortality rate, but it is generally accepted that countries with lower child mortality rates have healthier populations across a variety of metrics. Among the most important factors affecting the child mortality rate in a given country are the quality of and access to health care.
Although it is a very rough metric for the quality and access to health care, total per capita spending on health care can give us limited information about both of those metrics for a country. With the data from many countries combined we can ask questions about the general relationship between health care spending and the important health care outcome of child mortality rate.
Dataset
This data set contains data from 190 different countries for the year 2014. For each country the World Bank collected data on the total population, child mortality rate, and estimated per capita expenditure on health care.
These data originally came from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators and were downloaded from Our World In Data. Visit their site to explore the methodology and caveats involved in collecting data like these. We took a subset of these data limiting data points to the year 2014 and only including countries with values for all variables.
Variables
Country- This variable represents the country for which the values of all other variables were collected. In this particular dataset it has been coded as Info (rather than Categorical), and therefore cannot be graphed with DataClassroom.
Child Mortality Rate (per 1000 births)- This numeric variable represents the child mortality rate for a given country in the year 2014.
From the Our World in data site:
“Under-five mortality rate is the probability per 1,000 that a newborn baby will die before reaching age five, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of the specified year.”
Health Expenditure ($ per capita)- This numeric variable represents the per person spending on health care.
From the Our World in data site:
“Total health expenditure is the sum of public and private health expenditures as a ratio of total population. It covers the provision of health services (preventive and curative), family planning activities, nutrition activities, and emergency aid designated for health but does not include provision of water and sanitation. Data are in international dollars converted using 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) rates.”
Population- This numeric variable represents the number of people estimated to live in a given country.
Activity
Make a graph to explore the relationship between health care spending and child mortality rate.
Show Child Mortality rate on the Y-axis and Health Expenditure on the X-axis.
2. Describe the relationship between health care spending within a country and child mortality rate. Use your graph above as evidence for your description.
3. Use the Regression line check box at the right to fit a linear regression and then an exponential regression to these data. You can use the camera to paste and image of each graph/line of best fit here:
4. Which model (linear or exponential) best fits these data? Based on the model that fits best, what level of health care expenditure would you recommend as a minimum goal for making the biggest difference in global health for the least money?
5. Find the datapoint with the greatest health care expenditure on the graph. Hover on the point with your cursor to see its row number in the dataset. Go to the table to view to find which country it is. Suggest a plausible hypothesis as to why the country with the greatest expenditure on health care does not have the lowest child mortality rate?
*Teachers can request an answer key through the form below.