Public Social Expenditure Mix and Economic Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

Armed with the need for optimum balance in Nigerian government expenditures on social sector of the economy and the need to find out economically why the effect of the increasing government expenditures is not reflecting on the economic development of Nigeria in comparison with other economies with even less social spending, this study was carried out to find out the interaction effect of education and health expenditure on economic growth. Secondary data from CBN statistical bulletin and World Bank was used for the estimated using the Autoregressive Distributive Lag model (ARDL) and the study found that though the interaction term is highly significant, it is negative, even, in the midst of positive individual effect of education expenditure and health expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria. This is a wide prove that the current mix of education and health expenditures in Nigeria is harmful to the economy and there  is an urgent need to fashion out a better mix if possible. There is also a need for to establish an optimum education and health expenditure mix, since, the current mix has been found to be statistically significant.

Keywords: education expenditure, health expenditure, economic growth, interaction, government expenditure