article · UMYUK JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND DEVELOPMENT
An analysis of 13 West African countries between 2000 and 2023 examines how investments in human capital relate to poverty reduction across the ECOWAS region. By tracking public expenditure on education and health alongside indicators such as schooling duration and life expectancy, the assessment identifies a long-run relationship between these factors and socioeconomic conditions. However, the individual impacts of these inputs and outputs remain statistically insignificant across both short- and long-term periods. Education expenditure and schooling duration show positive but insignificant links with poverty alleviation, while health expenditure shows an insignificant negative relationship. Life expectancy demonstrates an insignificant negative effect in the short run and an insignificant positive effect over the long run. Consequently, achieving measurable improvements in living standards requires member states to enhance the efficiency of their social spending and share regional policy practices.
Governments often increase spending on education and healthcare with the expectation of directly alleviating poverty. These findings show that higher expenditures alone do not automatically translate into measurable poverty reduction across West Africa. For policy leaders and development partners, the research emphasises that the efficiency and quality of public resource allocation are critical for achieving real improvements in regional living standards.
The abstract focuses on macroeconomic policy, public sector spending efficiency, and regional governance, offering no direct commercial applications, private-sector products, or technology commercialisation pathways. Public sector analysts and regional policymakers could use these findings to reassess budget efficiency, but the work remains strictly at the level of policy guidance and public resource management rather than commercial development.
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This study investigates the impact of human capital development on poverty reduction in West African countries from 2000 to 2023, with significant policy implications for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. Utilizing panel data from 13 ECOWAS member states, the analysis employs the Cross-sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model to examine short- and long-run dynamics. Human capital variables are categorized into inputs (public education expenditure as a percentage of GDP and public health expenditure as a percentage of GDP) and outputs (mean years of schooling and life expectancy at birth), with socioeconomic conditions serving as a proxy for poverty levels. The results confirm a long-run relationship among the variables. Specifically, public education expenditure exhibits a positive but statistically insignificant effect on poverty reduction in both the short and long run, while public health expenditure shows a negative and statistically insignificant impact in both periods. Similarly, mean years of schooling has a positive but statistically insignificant effect in the short and long run, whereas life expectancy at birth shows a negative and statistically insignificant effect in the short run and a positive but statistically insignificant effect in the long run. These findings underscore the need for enhanced efficiency in resource allocation. The study recommends that ECOWAS countries prioritize improving the efficiency of education and healthcare expenditures to strengthen human capital development, enhance living standards, and foster regional collaboration to share best practices in education and health policy implementation.
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DOI: 10.70861/ujed20250202019
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