Abstract
The recurrent expenditure on health care has continued to increase without commensurate impacts from the healthcare sector on the economy in Nigeria. This paradox has continued to be of great concern to policymakers in Nigeria. The implication is that government spending on the health sector is inadequate for the sector, among others, to return Nigerian economies to aggregate equilibrium. Consequently, this study investigated the nexus between government spending, health outcomes, and economic growth in Nigeria using the data from 1980 to 2021 sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics, and the World Bank. Estimating techniques adopted are descriptive analysis, trend analysis, correlation analysis, and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The study adopted real gross domestic product (GDP) as the dependent variable and eight other variables as the study's explanatory variables. The estimated result revealed that the lag of real total government recurrent spending had a positive and significant impact on economic growth in both the long and short run. The lag of total government capital spending had a positive and significant relationship with economic growth in the long run but failed to be significant in the short run. The lag in health sector output exhibited a positive and significant impact on economic growth in the short and long run. The study recommended that the government at all levels should provide adequate infrastructures, the white elephant project should be eliminated, and health expenditure should be increased to stimulate health output on economic growth to discourage Nigerians from seeking health services overseas.