GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES AND STANDARD OF LIVING IN NIGERIA

The study examines the effect of government expenditure on standard of living from the period of 1981 to 2022. The research work aimed at assessing the effect of government expenditure in social and community services, economic services and transfer on standard of living in Nigeria using a secondary data source from the publication of Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin (2022) and World Development Indicators (2022). In order to achieve the objective, the study employed the econometric technique of short-run and long-run auto-regressive distributive lab model (ARDL). The method was adopted due to the fact that the variables used for the study was stationary at level and at first difference. The result of the pre-estimation test reveals that our variable used for the study was not normally distributed, existent of heteroskedasticity in the model and as well, evidence of no serial correlation in the model in the short-run. The result of our finding reveals that government expenditure in economic services, social and community development and transfer has a positive relationship with standard of living in Nigeria both at short-run and long-run during the period under study. Also, inflation rate has a positive with gross domestic investment in Nigeria. It is therefore recommended that government should appropriate lesser portion of its expenditure to recurrent expenditure and pay more attention to capital expenditure as it is the major drive to economic growth. Also, government expenditure on economic services should be given priority attention by devices means to improve in important sectors such as agriculture, road, infrastructure and construction in other to enable environment in which private firm can drive as this will contribute to economic productivity which will increases the standard of living in Nigeria.