Environmental pollution, health expenditure and economic growth in the Sub-Saharan Africa countries: Panel ARDL approach

This paper is interested in modeling the nexus between health expenditure (HE), Environmental pollution (CO2 emissions; Nitrous oxide emissions) and economic growth in the Sub-Saharan Africa countries using annual data over the period 1990-2015. We had applied the estimation method ARDL to model the long run and short run. In addition, we use the VECM Granger causality test for checking the direction of causality. Firstly, the results of ARDL test indicate that economic growth has positive impact on the HE while CO2 emissions and NOE have negatives impact on the HE in the long run. The results show that a 1% increase in per capita GDP will lead to a 0.332% increase in the health expenditure, but an increase in CO2 emissions and NOE of 1% will decrease the HE by 0.066% and 0.577%, respectively. On the other hand, the results of the VECM Granger causality show that there is a one-way relationship going from the HE to GDP per capita. On the contrary, a two-way causality relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita and also between the HE and CO2 emissions is found.