Macro-economic variables and mortality rate nexus: Focus on Nigeria

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of critical macroeconomic drivers like economic growth (gross domestic product (GDP)/capita), inflation and population size on the mortality rate of Nigeria. The general lockdown imposed by the government to curb the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had so many effects like loss of jobs, insecurity, businesses collapsing, salary cuts, unemployment and increased prices of commodities in the market. Design/methodology/approach - The paper focused on secondary data for the period 1991-2019 for GDP/capita, inflation, population size and mortality rate which were obtained from World Development Indicators (WDI). Time series analysis tests like augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Bounds co-integration and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) were used to determine the stationarity conditions of the variables, co-integration presence among the variables and to determine the short-run and long-run relationships between the endogenous and exogenous variables. Findings - The study shows that the variables are stationary at different orders i.e. I (0) and I (1) and the presence of co-integration among the variables. There exists a positive relationship between GDP/capita and mortality rate on the short-run which means increase in GDP/capita does not reduce the mortality rate in the country, there is also a positive short-run relationship between inflation and mortality rate but there are no long-run relationships among the variables. Originality/value - The paper clearly examines the impact of GDP/capita, inflation and population growth on mortality rate in Nigeria.