Public spending on education and health in Uganda: do the poor benefit?

In: Focus Afrika, 24

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of who benefits from public spending on education and health in Uganda. It applies a benefit incidence analysis, which reveals that expenditures for primary and secondary education, primary health care and hospitals are progressively distributed. Only expenditures for tertiary education turned out to be regressive. In addition, expenditures for primary education as well as for primary health care are pro-poor, i.e. the poors' share in these expenditures is higher than their share in the total population. Considering that both these sub-sectors had been declared poverty priority areas, credit should be given to the government for achieving such a pro-poor outcome. However, the quality of public social services suffers from a grossly inadequate human resource base as well as an abiding problem of low funding and insufficient financial resources in both the education and health sectors. Thus, despite having improved access to education and health care for the poor, the currently prevailing low quality of such services limits their potential impact on poverty quite substantially. (DÜI-IAK)