EFFECTS OF HEALTH ON PRODUCTIVITY OUTCOMES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

This study examined the effects of population poor health status proxied by malnutrition rate and access to safe drinking water on productivity outcomes disaggregated into total factor productivity, labour productivity and economic performance in thirty-three Sub-Saharan African countries. The decline in overall productivity level and human capital accumulation in the sub-region unlike in many other developed regions of the world as a result of incidence of non-fatal undernourishment and water borne diseases which have impaired the productivity of the labour force necessitated the study. The Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique was employed in obtaining the numerical coefficients due to the endogeneity nature of the health variables, after analyzing the descriptive statistics, panel Granger causality tests, the Levin, Lin and Breitung panel unit root tests at levels and differences, the Pedroni and Kao residual cointegration tests were applied to test for the existence of long run relationship among the variables. Data for the study covered the period, 2000-2017 were extracted from the World Development Indicators database of 2018 and Food and Agricultural Organization database of 2018.The empirical results revealed that the health variables were insignificant in determining the sub-region’s overall productivity level, positively correlated with Gross Domestic Product growth rate and significantly influences the labour productivity level of the sub-region. The study therefore recommended that Government in the sub-region should implement food policy programmes to ameliorate the high incidence of malnutrition in addition to provision of clean pipe-borne water in areas and communities where water sources are contaminated or potable water is inaccessible due to the direct impact of these health variables on human labour.