ANALYSING THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC POLICIES ON UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study is carried out to empirically examine the effect of economic policies on unemployment and poverty in Nigeria between 1970-2019. The persistent and high level of poverty in Nigeria accompanied by severe unemployment despite the adoption and implementation of various economic policies in terms of fiscal and monetary policies is the motivation behind this study. The objective of the study is to examine how effective economic policies have been in terms of fiscal and monetary policies in curbing unemployment and poverty incidence. The variables used are Poverty index (POV), Unemployment Rate (UMP), fiscal policy instruments in terms of Government expenditure (GEX), Tax and Public Debt, Monetary policy instruments in terms of monetary policy rate (MPR), interest rate (INR) and money supply (MS). Time series dynamic analysis was used to analyses the impact of these macroeconomic instruments on poverty and unemployment. The Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model was used to examine the short-run, interim and long-run effect of economic policies on unemployment and poverty between 1970-2019. Preliminary test such as stationarity test, cointegration test and trend analysis were conducted before estimation. The evidences from various econometrics analyses from this study revealed that, macroeconomic policies such as money supply, government capital expenditure, unemployment rate and interest rate have a statistically significant impact on poverty level in Nigeria from 1970-2019. The implication of this is that an increase in money supply and government expenditure has a negative effect on poverty level but an increase in unemployment rate and inflation rate will lead to higher poverty level in Nigeria since unemployment rate has a positive and significant impact on poverty level. The recommendations made include; that, since government capital expenditure has a negative impact on poverty level, emphasis should be laid on increasing government capital expenditure especially those meant for development programs and projects to enhance employment which will in turn reduce poverty level in the country.