Economic Welfare, Maternal Health Risks and Mortality in Nigeria: Evidence from Autoregressive Distributed Lag Technique
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Abstract
This study examines how economic welfare and maternal health risks shape maternal mortality in Nigeria using annual time-series data for 1990–2024. The analysis is motivated by Nigeria’s persistently high maternal mortality burden relative to global targets and by the limited evidence on how macroeconomic conditions translate into maternal health outcomes through specific risk channels. The study employs an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework to estimate short-run dynamics, long-run relationships, and mediation effects. Maternal mortality is modelled as a function of GDP per capita, current health expenditure, female education, physician-to-population ratio, adolescent birth rate, income inequality, pollution, and out-of-pocket health expenditure. The bounds test indicates a stable long-run cointegrating relationship among the variables. The long-run estimates show that current health expenditure and physician density significantly reduce maternal mortality, whereas adolescent birth rate and income inequality significantly increase it. GDP per capita has no statistically significant direct effect, implying that economic growth alone does not automatically improve maternal health outcomes. The error-correction term indicates that about 34.86% of short-run disequilibrium is corrected each year. Mediation results further suggest that adolescent birth rate partly transmits the effect of economic welfare to maternal mortality. The paper contributes to the literature by integrating welfare indicators and maternal risk factors within a unified time-series framework for Nigeria. The findings underscore the importance of health financing, equitable access to skilled care, and policies that reduce adolescent fertility and socioeconomic inequality if sustained reductions in maternal mortality are to be achieved.
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