Analysis of Public Health Expenditure and Health outcome in Nigeria

Abstract

The study critically investigated the effect of public health expenditure in Nigeria considering its outcome by life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rates. The study made an attempt to provide empirical evidence of the impact of public health spending on health outcomes in Nigeria with secondary data spanning from 1980 and 2018. Therefore, the study made use of the Johansen Co-integration and the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) econometric technique to determine the long-run relationship between public spending on health and health outcomes in Nigeria. The result indicated that public spending on health has a significant relationship with health outcomes in Nigeria. It was also discovered that environmental factors such as carbon dioxide emissions which was used in this study affects individuals’ health. Furthermore, the results showed that an increase in public health expenditure in Nigeria improves life expectancy and reduces infant mortality rates for about 12%. In addition, urban population and HIV prevalence rate significantly affects health outcomes for about 50% while per capita income exhibits no effect on health outcomes in Nigeria. Therefore, based on the findings, the study recommends that government should introduce programmes, like health inspectors going round to create awareness and health seminars that will cause awareness concerning the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on individual’s health and should enact stiff penalty measures on those people and industries who default in community sanitisation. Also, the government should increase and restructure the public expenditure allocation to the health sector in Nigeria in order to reduce to the barest minimum the crowding out effect.