Moderating role of population growth rate on remittance-growth nexus in Nigeria

Abstract

There has been debate about whether the population growth rate and remittance impacts are beneficial or detrimental to economic growth and whether population growth has any moderating role in the remittance-growth nexus. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the moderating role of population growth in the remittance-growth nexus, as well as to evaluate the direction of causality between these elements. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the Granger causality test were employed to analyze the study's objectives. The analysis used data from the World Bank's World Development Indicators for the years 1990-2022. The findings of this study reveal that both population growth and remittances have a positive and significant impact on economic growth in the long run, whereas the population growth rate negatively and significantly moderates the impact of remittances on economic growth in the long run but is insignificant in the short run. The Granger causality test demonstrates unidirectional causation flowing from population expansion to economic growth. It consequently proposes that the government and individuals who receive these remittances invest them in more productive sectors such as health, education, and training so that they have a positive impact on the country's economic progress.