Assessing the possibility of financing social health insurance from zakat, case of Sudan : ARDL bounds approach

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find funding sources for social health insurance in Sudan to cover vulnerable families. Design/methodology/approach: The concept of this paper is to look into the causality relationship between insured and directly paid poor people and their incomes through using the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and using a survey raw data carried out in 2010 in Sudan. Findings: The findings show that insured vulnerable people and income-generating activities have a significant positive relationship. The results, on the other hand, show a marginally negative effect on income for those who have directly paid poor people. Originality/value: Previous research on the position of zakat has focused primarily on its role in poverty alleviation and has given little consideration to its role in social security. This study is characterized by improving the possibility of changing the mechanism of distributing zakat funds in favor of health financing to maximize the benefit.