An Empirical Analysis of Public Health Expenditure on Life Expectancy: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper examines an empirical evidence of the specific impact of public health expenditure on life expectancy in Nigeria using time series data spanning between 1981 and 2014. The study made use of the recent bounds testing co-integration approach developed within the framework of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) procedure to determine the long-run relationship between public spending on health and life expectancy in Nigeria. Empirical findings suggest that a long run relationship between life expectancy, public health expenditure, primary school enrollment exist in Nigeria. The results showed that Primary School Enrolment (PHEXP) and Carbon-dioxide Emission (CAREM) significantly and directly influenced the rate of life expectancy in Nigeria. On the other hand, Primary School Enrolment (PSEN) was found to be insignificant in both short and long runs contrary to economic theory. It was also revealed that environmental factors such as carbon dioxide emissions which was used in this study affects individuals’ health. Therefore, based on the findings of this study, it recommends that government should introduce programmes that will enable people to be aware of the effect of carbon-dioxide emissions on individual’s health and should advise people and industries the appropriate measure to be taken and as well to separate residential and industrial areas, to avoid any hazard caused by carbon-dioxide emissions. Also, the government should increase and restructure the public expenditure allocation to the health sector.