Abstract The Study examined the “impact of human capital development on the economic growth in Nigeria: 1980-2024”. The variables of interest are Economic growth rate (EGR), Government Expenditure on Health (GEH), Government Expenditure on Education (GEE), Poverty rate (GPR) and Employment Generation rate (EGP). Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) was employed to test for the stationarity of the variables under study. The result of the unit root test revealed that Economic growth rate (EGR) was stationary at level while Government Expenditure on Health (GEH), Government Expenditure on Education (GEE), Poverty rate (GPR) and Employment Generation rate (EGP) were stationary at first difference. The ARDL BOUNDS test revealed that there is a long run co-integrating relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables. Both the ARDL short run and long-run results indicate that Government Expenditure on Health had a negative and significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria, while Government Expenditure on Education had a positive and insignificant impact on the economic growth in Nigeria during the period under consideration. Findings also revealed that Government poverty reduction programmes had positive and significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria whereas, employment generation rate impacted negatively and insignificantly on the economic growth in Nigeria. The diagnostic test revealed that F-stats and probabilities obtained reflect positivity as they all suggest the rejection of null hypothesis for each category of diagnostic tests. Explicatively, the serial correlation test result shows the absence of serial correlation as an econometric problem. Lastly, the Granger causality test results show that unidirectional relationship runs between Employment generation rate and Economic growth in Nigeria, while there is no causality between economic growth and other remaining independent variables. A number of recommendations were made based on the findings prominent among them is the need for Government and other relevant authorities to increase the expenditure on health as such can boost the health status of the people which is likely to fill the health care delivery service gap already being experienced in the country.
M Ibrahim (Tue,) studied this question.