Effect of energy consumption on health outcome in Nigeria and South Africa: the ARDL bound testing approach

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of fossil fuel and electricity consumption on life expectancy and infant mortality in Nigeria and South Africa. Both countries are leading economies in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region with large differences in the amounts of energy consumed and health outcome measures. The aim is to determine whether the energy type consumed has contributed to the existing gap in health outcome given its role on developmental indices. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with data from the World Development Indicators (WDI) was employed. Findings from the study showed negative effects of fossil fuel use on life expectancy and infant mortality rates for both countries. The effect of fossil fuel use on life expectancy is only noticeable in the short run. In Nigeria, negative effect of fossil fuel consumption on infant deaths is observed both in the short and long run with indications of stronger long run effects. Findings for South Africa, however,  showed negative effect of fossil fuel consumption on infant deaths only in the short run with higher magnitude than short run effects in Nigeria. Negative effects of electricity consumption on health outcome was observed in both countries, but in South Africa the effect was only in the short run. This could be due to health hazards associated with the mining of coal from which electricity is produced in South Africa. In particular, there are evidences of water and air pollution associated with coal mining that can be detrimental to health status. Policy actions geared towards improvements in health outcome in Nigeria and South Africa should consider measures that discourage the use of fossil fuel for electricity generation.

Keywords: Electricity Consumption; Fossil fuel, Health Outcome; ARDL model