Impact of Public Spending on Human Capital on Benins Economic Growth

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of public spending on human capital on economic growth. It is the human capital production function of Barro (1996) that was inspired for the specification of the model of this work. The study covered the period from 1980 to 2014. The work took into account the variables related to health, those related to education, economic policy and phenomena beyond the actions of governments. Thus, we have included in the model GDP per capita, public expenditure on health per capita, life expectancy at birth, investment expenditure on health (in the absence of sufficient data on health infrastructure coverage). , gross primary and secondary enrollment rates, population growth rate, openness of the economy and average rainfall. As a result of our work, these variables account for 98 % overall and significantly the variations in GDP per capita over the long term and 83 % for the short term. From the results of our econometric estimations, it appears that: In the long term, an increase in public health expenditure of 1 % will lead to an increase in the Gross Domestic Product of 0.17 %, all else being equal. In the short term, the effect on economic growth of the same change (1 %) in public health spending would be 1.07 %. However, the short-term effect of these expenditures on GDP is not significant.