Introduction: Today, the fight against child mortality is considered as a key goal and strategy, and it is one of the important predictors of health and productivity in life and an important indicator of social and economic development.
Methods: In this regard, this article examines the effects of health expenditures on child mortality with regard to the role of economic growth using a simultaneous equation model for Iran in the period 1990-2020. For this purpose, Eviews 10 software is used as an experimental estimation technique and data collected by the World Bank, the Central Bank and the Statistics Center of Iran.
Results: The estimated coefficient of health expenses in the mortality equation has a negative and significant relationship equal to (-0.83) with a p-value of 0.015, the value of the coefficient of health expenses in the economic growth model is equal to 0.79; And the p-value is 0.032; and the GDP per capita growth factor in the equation of positive health costs has a value of 0.41 with a p-value of 0.081. The results also showed that the indirect effect of health costs on reducing mortality (0.17) is lower than the direct effect (0.83). In addition, public health costs have a greater effect (0.87 and p-value 0.003) on reducing mortality than private costs (0.20 with p-value 0.303).
Conclusion: According to the experimental results obtained in the present study, governments should increase the amount of resources allocated to the provision of health services. In addition, although government spending can help reduce child mortality in the country, health spending should not be limited to government spending.