Impact of income inequality on health and education in Africa: the long-run role of public spending with short-run dynamics

Tonmoy Chatterjee, Ghirmai Tesfamariam Teame and Sharmi Sen
Additional contact information
Ghirmai Tesfamariam Teame: College of Business and Social Sciences
Sharmi Sen: Monash University

Journal of Computational Social Science, 2024, vol. 7, issue 1, No 11, 259-304

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we empirically investigate the long-run impact of income inequality on the pattern of major developmental indicators such as health and education in the African continent. We use an unbalanced panel dataset comprising 31 African countries for 40 years for the time period spanning 1980–2019. Our empirical results, used in conjunction with theoretical underpinnings, show that income inequality adversely affects health and education, both in the short run and in the long run. Interestingly, we also find that efficient state interventions in the form of investment in both health and education leads to unambiguous improvements in health and education outcomes in long run, although the curse of income disparity continues to have a negative effect on health and education in Africa in the short run. Apart from this, the present study also finds the threshold levels of government investments required to achieve positive outcomes in the long run in terms of health and educational in Africa, which are sustainable in the long run even in the presence of income inequality These results could be important for policymakers in Africa intending to boost health and education outcomes in a continent ridden by massive disparities in the income of its inhabitants.

Keywords: Health; Education; Income inequality; Public investment; Short-run causality; Long-run causality; Panel cointegration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 H51 H52 I14 I25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42001-023-00237-4 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:jcsosc:v:7:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s42001-023-00237-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iences/journal/42001

DOI: 10.1007/s42001-023-00237-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Computational Social Science is currently edited by Takashi Kamihigashi

More articles in Journal of Computational Social Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().