Government Health Care Financing and Workforce Productivity: Empirical Evidence From Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined empirically, Government Health Care Financing and Workforce Productivity. The variables examined are workforce growth rate as a proxy for workforce productivity, government capital, recurrent and total expenditure, GDP and the total government expenditure as a percentage of GDP. A Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model was estimated using the Nigerian annual time series data from 1980 to 2010. Results from the VAR estimate and Granger causality revealed that; government capital expenditure on health care in Nigeria had a negative effect on workforce productivity over the period of study. Government recurrent expenditure on health care in Nigeria impacted positively on workforce productivity over the period of study although the impact was weak; government capital expenditure and government recurrent expenditure on healthcare caused workforce productivity over the period of study, meaning that changes in these form of expenditures could also account for changes in workforce productivity. The study shows that government health care financing has made a little or no positive impact on workforce productivity in Nigeria over the period of study, although a positive change in financing could lead to a positive change in workforce productivity. Therefore, government should expedite action towards providing qualitative health infrastructures; boosting recurrent expenditure to maintaining them and increasing spending to finance the national health insurance scheme. This will provide a conducive working environment for the workers to improve in their productivity; and ensure that productive time on thinking of how to pay for out of pocket health care is channeled towards productivity.

Keywords: workforce, productivity, government, expenditure, health care