Human Capital Development and Economic Growth in Nigeria: An Application of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model Approach

This study examined the impact of human capital development on economic growth in Nigeria from 1990 to 2020. The study adopted an ex post facto research design, to make an empirical investigation on the impact of human capital development proxy by Immunization against measles, infant mortality rate, and government expenditure on health and education as well as total energy consumption and on economic growth proxy by the growth rate of GDP. The study employed the ADF unit root test; the bounds test approach to cointegration, ARDL long and Short-run estimations as well as some post-estimation tests. Accordingly, the unit root test result showed that the variables under consideration are integrated at different orders 1 and 0. The bound test confirmed the presence of a long-run relationship among the variables under discourse. The ARDL estimation in the long run showed that a 1% decrease in infant mortality resulted in a 0.91% increase in GDPG. Also, a 1% increase in government expenditure on education and health increased GDPG by 0.23% and 0.05% respectively. The study recommended the prioritization of investment in education and healthcare to reduce infant mortality rates.