The Empirical Analysis of Disease Burden and Wealth Creation in Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the impact of disease burden on wealth creation in Nigeria using annual time series data ranging from 2006-2018. The different levels of integration of the data warrant the use of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model as methodology for the analysis. The theoretical framework was based on the Disability Life Years (DALY) of Murray (1996) which says that the burden of disease is arrived at by the number of years a person loses as a result of dying early due to ailments and the number of years of life a person lives with disability caused by the disease. The long run empirical analysis revealed that wealth creation has impact on disease burden in Nigeria. This conversely infers that as the source of livelihood increase, the disease burden on the population is reduced because people will have income to attract health consideration which invariably will reduce the chances of suffering from diseases. The life expectancy at birth has a more significant impact on disease burden than population and even wealth creation. It is therefore recommended that measures that lead to wealth creation should be harnessed as this will greatly reduce the burden of diseases in Nigeria which will invariably increase life expectancy at birth.