Public Health Expenditure and Hiv/Aids Epidermic in Nigeria: An Evidence from Vector Autoregressive Methodology

Abstract

The paper was an attempt to investigate the impact of public health expenditure on diseases/epidermics in Nigeria particularly as development assistance for HIV/AIDS decreases. Data were sourced from World Development Indicator (WDI) from the period of 1982 to 2016 and analysis was done using a vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology. The findings from the VAR analysis indicates a negative significant relationship between hiv prevalence and government expenditure on health. Per capita income suggests weak relationship with hiv prevalence. Shocks from government expenditure on health and per capita income caused a persistent downward spiral in hiv and most of the variations in hiv prevalence explained by government health expenditure. The paper recommends that government health expenditure would be a viable alternative for the management and control of epidemics/diseases in Nigeria cum to achieve the HIV/AIDS goal by 2030 compare to per capita income of households.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS epidemic, Health, Per capita income, VAR

JEL Classification: H5, I1, Y1