Health human capital and economic growth in Africa: the moderating role of trade and insights by gender and income level

The expenditures on education are often encouraged by the fact that education provides a strong contribution to economic growth. However, health measures have contributed to health improvements, and the literature also considers health as a key determinant of growth. The link between health and growth rate has become an interesting and crucial theme of the debate, especially in the context of COVID-19. The paper examines the effects of health human capital on economic growth by highlighting the complementarity role of trade, the effect of women’s and men’s health on growth, and comparing the effect of health on growth in low-income countries (LICs) to that in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) between 1980–2021 in Africa. The instrumental variables (IV) approach with fixed effects (IV-FE) is used to control for the endogeneity issue. The findings reveal that health significantly enhances growth in Africa, but only in LMICs. Also, health of both male and female significantly increase growth in Africa. Furthermore, adult survival is more relevant for growth than life expectancy. Finally, the marginal effect (ME) of life expectancy at birth increases with the level of trade above a certain threshold; above the level of trade = 38.745% of GDP this ME becomes positive and statistically significant. Also, the ME of adult survival growth rate increases with the level of trade above and below certain thresholds; between the interval]71.952, 136.319], the ME of adult survival growth rate is positive and statistically significant. These findings imply that health improvements and better align of health and trade policies are needed to stimulate growth in Africa.