Empirical evidence on the link between financial inclusion and out-of-pocket health expenditure remains sparse while existing studies have mainly not used a multidimensional financial inclusion index. This study examines the link between financial inclusion and out-of-pocket health expenditure in Ghana using data from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey. To ensure robustness in findings, the standard instrumental variable (with external instruments) and Lewbel’s heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variable approaches are both applied. Our findings indicate that a standard deviation increase in financial inclusion is associated with an increase in households’ out-of-pocket health expenditure between 0.1367 and 1.7608 standard deviations. This finding is more pronounced for female-headed and urban-located households. Financial inclusion has a bigger association with expenses on medical products/appliances than on outpatient services. Policymakers are encouraged to design and implement programs to scale up the level of financial inclusion which has the potential of facilitating demand for health, thereby leading to better health outcomes.

关于普惠金融与自付费用卫生支出之间联系的实证证据仍然很少，而现有研究主要没有使用多维普惠金融指数。本研究使用第七轮加纳生活标准调查的数据，检验了加纳金融包容性与自付费用医疗支出之间的联系。为了确保结果的稳健性，标准工具变量（使用外部工具）和 Lewbel 基于异方差的工具变量方法都被应用。我们的研究结果表明，普惠金融标准差的增加与家庭自付费用医疗支出的增加有关，介于 0.1367 和 1.7608 标准差之间。这一发现在女性户主和城市地区的家庭中更为明显。与门诊服务相比，普惠金融与医疗产品/设备的费用关联更大。鼓励政策制定者设计和实施计划以扩大金融包容性水平，这有可能促进健康需求，从而带来更好的健康结果。