An attempt is made in this paper to examine the impacts of government spending on human capital on human development indicators like healthcare outcomes, education achievements and increase in national income in Namibia using time series data from 1980 to 2015. The analysis reveals a significant long-run inverse relationship of government spending on healthcare with fertility rate, infant mortality rate and under-5 mortality rate. However, no co-integration is observed between government spending on healthcare and life-expectancy or adult mortality rate. Also, the findings reveal a significant long-run positive relationship of government spending on education with literacy rate, net primary and gross tertiary enrolment rate. Whereas, no co-integration between government spending on education and gross enrolment rate at primary and secondary level is observed. The vector auto-regression analysis revealed significant impacts of expenditure on healthcare and education on the GDP growth in the long run through improved human resources. The results are thus in favour of continuation of expansionary government expenditure policy to achieve faster economic growth in Namibia. However, drastic changes should be adopted to improve basic education and primary healthcare in the country.
In this paper, we examined whether changes in fiscal measures through increasing government expenditure on education and healthcare services adopted after independence has made significant impact on the welfare of the Namibian people. Time series data from Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education of Government of Namibia, Namibia Statistics Agency and World Bank during the period between 1980 and 2015 has been used for the purpose of analysis. A comparison of growth in such expenditures, GDP and other human development indicators has been made between the pre-and post-independence periods. Finally, impacts of changes in healthcare and education expenditure on reduction in mortality, increase in life expectancy at birth, rising literacy and growth of people acquiring higher/technical education, etc. have been examined by using regression analysis. It is revealed that the Namibian people are better off now as compared to the pre-independence era. However, policy changes adopted at the time of independence has not been highly successful in transforming life of the Namibian people as expected. There are still a lot of scopes for the improvement of fiscal management in the country.
In this paper, we examined whether changes in fiscal measures through increasing government expenditure on education and healthcare services adopted after independence has made significant impact on the welfare of the Namibian people. Time series data from Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education of Government of Namibia, Namibia Statistics Agency and World Bank during the period between 1980 and 2015 has been used for the purpose of analysis. A comparison of growth in such expenditures, GDP and other human development indicators has been made between the pre-and post-independence periods. Finally, impacts of changes in healthcare and education expenditure on reduction in mortality, increase in life expectancy at birth, rising literacy and growth of people acquiring higher/technical education, etc. have been examined by using regression analysis. It is revealed that the Namibian people are better off now as compared to the pre-independence era. However, policy changes adopted at the time of independence has not been highly successful in transforming life of the Namibian people as expected. There are still a lot of scopes for the improvement of fiscal management in the country.
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