This study examined the relationship between investments in education and health and poverty alleviation in Nigeria from 1990 to 2024 (35 years). The 2025 publications of the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin and World Bank were sources of the secondary data employed in this study. The Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) diagnostics was utilized in the data estimation, having established the existence of no long-run relationship in the model. Investment in education, investment in health and literacy rate were regressed on poverty alleviation (proxied by poverty headcount) in Nigeria. The findings of the study revealed that investment in education posited positive but statistically insignificant effect on poverty alleviation. Alternatively, investment in health and literacy rate showed negative but statistically insignificant relationships with poverty alleviation in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that to effectively reduce poverty, Nigeria should enhance the quality and targeting of education and health investments, reform literacy programs to include income-generating skills, and adopt a multi-sectoral development strategy that addresses broader structural and institutional factors influencing poverty alleviation.
Emerenini et al. (Sun,) studied this question.