Has Fiscal Decentralization Influenced the Quality of Life in Sub-Saharan Africa? Empirical Evidence From Nigeria

Abstract

Sub-Sahara Africa countries has the highest proportion of people with the lowest access to basic amenities required to live well. Nigeria contributes significantly to the low quality of life in the region. Many governments particularly in Africa adopted government decentralization as a major policy reform to improve the distribution of public goods and services. The overall outcome of government decentralization is believed to be more dependent on the extent of fiscal decentralization. This study examined the influence of fiscal decentralization on indicators of health, education, household wealth and living environment.The estimation technique used in this study is based on Vector autoregression (VAR) model.Besides, an impulse response function (orf) function and a Granger causality test was also generated as post-estimation to confirm the results. The results revealed that though the growth in the previous revenue of states and local governments had an inverse relationship with improvements in the indicators. The expenditure of sub national governments had a weak effect but it had an increasing influence on all the indicators except child mortality. The results of the Granger causality test revealed that variations in child mortality rates and access to improved water cannot be explained by both revenue and expenditure of the sub national governments in Nigeria. The quality of life people live can be improved if the issue of financial constraints and accountability at the sub national level of governments is addressed.

Boosting the quality of life through additional general allocation funds for village infrastructure development

“…The availability of health resources (including integrated healthcare center/pos pelayanan terpadu (posyandu), health personnel) did not bring any effect on increasing the quality of health of the community [22] due to scarcity of health infrastructure in an area. In addition, the results of other studies also concluded that government budgets did not have any significant effect on psychological health and health in general [23]- [25], similar to a study in Indonesia which also showed no significant effect in the short term [26]. The findings of previous studies still show inconsistencies.…”