Unit Root and Stationarity Tests in Expenditure on Health and Economic Growth Series: Maximizing the Power of Breakpoints

This study analyzed the time series nature of the indicators of expenditure on health and, growth and expansion of economic activities using the traditional Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root( henceforth UR) and test of stationarity with structural breaks for East, Southern and West African regions for the 1990 to 2020 period. Conventionally, our UR test indicated that all our selected series were not were not stationary at levels. The ADF test identified single most important breakpoints at levels and at first difference for each region. The identified breakpoints occurred essentially during the mid-1990s ( specifically 1993,1994 and 1996) and the early parts of 2000s when either , or , or all expenditure on health series experienced uncommon breaks as a result of the turning point of the HIV epidemic in the regions of Africa. The case of was not different as breakpoints were also identified for each region for the 1990s and the early part of 2000s.