Impact of Government Health Expenditure on Under-Five Child Mortality in Nigeria: Error Correction Model

The study examined the impact of health government expenditure on under-five child mortality in Nigeria. The specific objectives are to: determine the impact of health government expenditure on under-five child mortality in Nigeria; ascertain whether there is long-run relationship between health government expenditure and under-five child mortality in Nigeria and identify direction of causality relationship between health government expenditure and under-five child mortality in Nigeria. This study made use of ex post-facto research design. The pre-estimation and post-estimation tests were descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, ADF-Fisher Unit Root test statistic, Johansen co-integration test, Ramsey Reset test, Breuch-Godfrey Serial Correlation LM Test respectively while the data analytical technique was error correction model technique. These variables of the study consist of under-five child mortality (CHILDMOR); government health expenditure (GHEXP), recurrent health expenditure (RHEXP), capital health expenditure (CHEXP), domestic private health expenditure (DPHEXP), and adult literacy rate (15 and above) (ADULT) for a period of 1986 to 2022 as defined in our model specification. The empirical results show that health government expenditure has positive and significant impact under-five child mortality because probability value of 0.0016 which is less than 0.05; The trace statistics of Johansen co-integration test identify that there are four (4) co-integrating equation(s) at the 5 percent level of significance. Thus, there is a long-run relationship among the variables and there is non-directional relationship between government health expenditure and under-five child mortality while there is bi-directional relationship between adult literacy rate and under-five child mortality. Again, there is no causal relationship among recurrent health expenditure, capital health expenditure, domestic private health expenditure and under-five child mortality. The study recommends that Nigeria government should improve allocation and release of funds to the health sector and monitor same to ensure effective utilization of such fund. This will help to see that such monies are actually channeled into socially desirable targets that can improve the economy.