Healthcare Inflation and Child Mortality in Nigeria: An Investigation into the Moderating Role of GDP per Capita Growth

Abstract

This study examined the impact of healthcare inflation on child mortality in Nigeria focusing on moderating roles of GDP per capita growth. This study used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the data covers from 1985 to 2023. The short-run dynamics show that increase in healthcare inflation significantly raise child mortality while the lagged health expenditure and moderating variable reveal delayed but reduce child mortality. The interaction variable constantly reduces child mortality. Long-run estimates further confirm that healthcare inflation worsens child mortality. However, health expenditure and the interaction variable significantly reduce child mortality. Moderating variable exhibits a weak and counterintuitive insignificant positive relationship with child mortality. The coefficient of interacting variable is statistically significant. Hence the variable serves as reliable moderator. This study recommends the need to control healthcare inflation, increase health expenditure, and promote even distribution of income to achieve sustainable reductions in child mortality.