Are Migration Remittances and Development Assistances Pathways to Improve Nigeria Health Outcomes?

Abstract

The impacts of migrant remittances and official development assistances (ODAs) on health outcomes in Nigeria between 2000 and 2024, were investigated. Despite increasing remittances and ODAs inflows in Nigeria, its developmental impact remain uncertain among researchers. Anchored on the Grossman health capital model and the two-gap theory, the study employs Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) techniques to assess the impacts of remittances, health-specific and non-health-specific ODAs, environmental conditions, and institutional quality on Nigeria’s health outcomes. The findings reveal that remittances and ODAs do not significantly improves health outcomes, even after accounting for institutional quality. It then concluded that remittances and ODAs are ineffective pathways for improving health outcomes in Nigeria and recommends prioritizing education and technical aids on targeted health programmes, such as community health base insurances, doctor without boarders’ initiatives for health improvement in Nigeria.