Influence of Inflation and Public Health Expenditure on Health Outcomes in Nigeria

This study investigates the influence of inflation and public health expenditure on health outcomes in Nigeria. It aims to identify how factors such as the inflation rate, government capital expenditure on health, government recurrent expenditure on health, foreign exchange rate, and GDP per capita affect maternal mortality and life expectancy at birth. The research spanned from 1985 to 2023 and employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach in the empirical analysis. The ARDL bound test result suggests evidence of a long-run relationship in both the maternal mortality and life expectancy models. Long-run estimates from the maternal mortality model indicate a positive relationship between inflation and maternal mortality, and a significantly negative relationship between GDP per capita (-0.043509) and maternal mortality. The outcome of the life expectancy model shows that the coefficients of government captial health expenditure (CHE) (1.082516), exchange rate (EXC) (0.01142) and government recurrent health expenditure (GRHE) (0.938435) were positive and statistically significant in the long run, while inflation (CPI) exerts a mixed effect on life expectancy at birth in the short and long term. These findings suggest income is a significant determinant of maternal mortality. Moreover, the findings further show that rising government health expenditures have a positive impact on life expectancy at birth. High inflation exerts a positive but insignificant influence on life expectancy in the short run, but is linked to a negatively significant outcome in the long run.  The study concludes by noting the imperative of integrating the goal of price stability and investment in public healthcare to improve the well-being of the population. Overall, the study advocates for a coordinated framework between the monetary and fiscal authorities that ensures the stability of the price level and improves public health expenditure to enhance life expectancy at birth and engender a decline in maternal mortality