Despite commitments to achieve Goal 3 of the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, which calls for good health and well-being, health inequities persist among nations. Due to education, healthcare, and resource disparities, vulnerable populations have poorer health outcomes. Policymakers must establish whether socio-demographic vulnerabilities or macroeconomic shortcomings are more responsible for the low resilience of the healthcare system to close the gap and achieve Goal 3. Unfortunately, there is little understanding of how socio-demographic and macroeconomic factors interact to sustain or exacerbate these discrepancies. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effect of socio-demographic and macroeconomic indicators on Goal 3 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the intriguing background of a giant of Africa, Nigeria. The study uses an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to assess the covert effects of socio-demographic and macroeconomic factors, including GDP, environmental sustainability, mortality rate, and literacy rate, on health and social well-being proxied by life expectancy (LEXP) using time series data for 30 years spanning from 1992 to 2021. According to the study’s findings, improvements in environmental quality and literacy, along with reductions in mortality rate, substantially impact LEXP in the short run and long run. At the same time, the effects of an increase in GDP tend to be more pronounced in the short run only. Also, the socio-demographic and macroeconomic measures and LEXP co-move and cannot independently stray very far from one another. Results from the complementary investigation show a unidirectional causal relationship between GDP, environmental sustainability, and longevity. However, mortality rate and longevity are causally related in both directions. This relationship suggests that a nation with a lower death rate has a higher longevity rate and vice versa. The study’s findings will be valuable for Nigerian leaders, international policymakers, and global leaders in developing interventions to promote the nation’s health and social well-being and the worldwide community in the context of
Examining goal 3 of the sustainable development agenda: socio-demographic vs. macroeconomic influences on health and social well-being
Policymakers must establish whether socio-demographic vulnerabilities or macroeconomic shortcomings are more responsible for the low resilience of the healthcare system to close the gap and achieve Goal 3. Unfortunately, there is little understanding of how socio-demographic and macroeconomic..