IMPACT OF HEALTH EXPENDITURE ON HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

The importance of health expenditure to human capital development cannot be overemphasized, several researchers has conducted studies to examine the impact of government health expenditure on human capital development in Nigeria but none seem to look at how out-of-pocket expenditure and physician per capita has influenced human capital development from the works reviewed. Therefore, this study examined the impact of government health expenditure and human capital development and to what extent out-of-pocket expenditure and physician per capita has impacted human capital development using secondary data from central bank of Nigeria (CBN) statistical bulletin and world bank database. The variable of the model includes human development index (HDI), which is the dependent variable, and government health expenditure (GHE), out of pocket expenditure (OPE) and physician per capita (PPC) as explanatory variables, while inflation rate (INF) is the control variable of the model. Johansen cointegration test and multiple regression model were employed for the analysis. The findings show the existence of a long-run relationship between the variables. From the analysis, all the variables except PPC conformed to the economic a priori expectation. GHE and OPE are positively related to human capital development in Nigeria while PPC and INF are negatively related to human capital development in Nigeria within the period of 1999 to 2022. The study recommends that government should increase health budgetary allocation so as to provide health facilities, subsidize health related goods and services, increase salaries of physicians and create an avenue for the production health related drugs in Nigeria in order for people to easily access health care products and services and foster human capital development.