Effects of economic growth, foreign direct investment and internet use on child health outcomes : empirical evidence from South Africa

Date
2020-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
This study examines the effects of economic growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) on child health outcomes measured by Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Child Mortality Rate Under 5 (CMRU5) with several control variables such as corruption, inequality and HIV among others. It analyzes South Africa's annual time series data for the period 1985–2016. As variables were found with mixed order of integration, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is applied to determine cointegration and estimate short-run and long-run coefficients. Results indicate that economic growth and FDI have negative significant effects on both indicators of child health outcomes in both the short run and the long run. This implies that both economic growth and FDI contribute towards reducing IMR and CMRU5 in South Africa and thus help improve child health outcomes. Toda and Yamamoto (TY) causality test confirms causal association between these variables. Policy implications are discussed.
Description
CITATION: Salahuddin, M. et al. 2020. Effects of economic growth, foreign direct investment and internet use on child health outcomes : empirical evidence from South Africa. , Development Studies Research, 7:1:1-17, doi:10.1080/21665095.2020.1717362.
The original publication is available at https://www.tandfonline.com
Keywords
Economic development -- Children -- South Africa, Child health -- South Africa, Infants -- Mortality -- South Africa -- Statistics, Child development -- South Africa, Internet and children -- South Africa, Health status indicators -- Children -- Standards -- South Africa, Box-Jenkins forecasting
Citation
Salahuddin, M. et al. 2020. Effects of economic growth, foreign direct investment and internet use on child health outcomes : empirical evidence from South Africa. , Development Studies Research, 7:1:1-17, doi:10.1080/21665095.2020.1717362.