Does International Health Aid Follow Recipients’ Needs? Extensive and Intensive Margins of Health Aid Allocation

Using OECD-DAC data covering 112 recipient countries for 1995–2011, this paper examines the responsiveness of health aid to the recipients’ needs in terms of infant mortality, child mortality, and HIV prevalence. This paper fills a gap in the literature by investigating extensive and intensive margins of health aid allocation patterns at project- and donor-levels. We find that when the health status of a recipient country deteriorates, the total value of health aid to the country increases due in large part to an increase in the number of health aid projects and to an increase in the average aid value from each donor country.