Assessing the impact of international trade on human development outcomes in Nigeria

Iyabo A. Olanrele () and Sebil Olalekan Oshota ()
Additional contact information
Iyabo A. Olanrele: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER)
Sebil Olalekan Oshota: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER)

Future Business Journal, 2025, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract This study examines the impact of trade per capita on human development outcomes in Nigeria over the period 1990–2022. Using data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Development Indicators (WDI), and other national source, the study employs Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) for the main analysis and the Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS), Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Canonical Cointegration Regression (CCR) for robustness checks. The results reveal that trade per capita significantly enhances human development, particularly by improving gross national income per capita and life expectancy, while its effects on education outcomes are less consistent. Furthermore, GDP per capita growth is found to negatively affect life expectancy in certain cases, suggesting that economic growth alone does not guarantee human development unless accompanied by equitable resource distribution. Public health expenditure positively influences both life expectancy and education, emphasizing the importance of targeted investments. These findings underscore the need for policies that enhance trade openness while simultaneously addressing infrastructural gaps and investing in health and education sectors to ensure sustainable and inclusive development.

Keywords: Trade; Human development; Per capital income; Life expectancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F14 O10 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s43093-025-00517-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:futbus:v:11:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1186_s43093-025-00517-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://fbj.springeropen.com/

DOI: 10.1186/s43093-025-00517-7

Access Statistics for this article

Future Business Journal is currently edited by Soad Kamel Rizk and Hayam Wahba

More articles in Future Business Journal from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().