The Effect of Population and Poverty Level on Economic Development in Nigeria

.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of population and poverty level on economic development in Nigeria using time series data spanning from 1981 to 2018. The data were analysed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique in order to examine the short run and long run impact of population and poverty level on economic development. The result of the ARDL bounds test reveals that there is the existence of a long run relationship between population growth, poverty level and economic development in Nigeria. The empirical results reveal that gross domestic product per capita proxy for poverty level has a significant positive impact on economic development in the short run although it shows a positive non-significant impact in the long run. On the other hand, population growth shows a negative significant impact on economic development proxied by gross domestic product growth rate in the short 
run. Also, there exists a unidirectional causal relationship from economic development to poverty level but a bidirectional causal relationship from population growth to economic development. In the light of these findings, the study concludes and recommends that government should reinforce its commitment towards alleviating the incidence of poverty through social safety nets in order to ensure sustainable development and also sensitize the populace on the need for family planning and other birth control measures in order to forestall population explosion.