Public Health Expenditure, Skill Birth Attendance and Infant Mortality in Indonesia: What Does Provincial Data Say?

The research aims to investigate the relationships between public health expenditure and infant mortality using the utilization of skilled birth attendance as an intermediate channel. Using Indonesia’s data from 2001 to 2006, the fixed effect estimation suggests no effect of per capita total health expenditure on infant mortality once the utilization of skilled birth attendance is not included in the model. However, introducing an interaction variable between per capita public health expenditure and skilled birth attendance, employing lagged skilled birth attendance and controlling for socio-economic variables, a statistically significant result emerge. The regression results also shows that socio-economic variables namely proportion of households having their own house and mother’s education are associated with reduction of infant mortality. This paper does not find any statistical evidence to support that the presence of skilled birth attendant at delivery affects infant mortality. This study finds that per capita public health expenditure and puskesmas coverage statistically significant affect the utilization of skilled birth attendance. An important new result is that the effect of public health spending seems to be more effective to increase the utilization of skilled birth attendance and reduce infant mortality in the areas with less access to skilled birth attendance and puskesmas.