Enrollment of informal sector employees in the national health insurance fund in Kenya

Abstract

Health insurance schemes have been increasingly recognized as preferable mechanisms to finance health care provision. In this direction the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) in Kenya has assumed significant importance in helping Kenyans access healthcare. However the penetration of NHIF especially to the informal sector and poor persons is limited. The objective of this paper is to establish factors determining enrollment of the informal sector employees in NHIF. This will help to explore how more of the informal sector workers could be integrated into the NHIF. Using a binary probit model to examine those factors, the robustness of the model is controlled for. The data of this study is based on household utilization and expenditure survey collected by the Ministry of Health in 2007. Factors such as the education level and income of individuals strongly influence their decision to enroll in NHIF. Several policy recommendations for increasing enrollment rates in the NHIF are discussed, among them being public enlightenment of health insurance and poverty reduction strategies meant to increase income levels among the informal sector workers.