Does Government Size Matter for Quality of Life in ECOWAS? Evidence from Method of Moment Quantile Regression
Keywords:
Government size, Quality of life, ECOWASAbstract
Quality of life across the ECOWAS sub region remains persistently low despite decades of government spending intended to improve health, education, and social welfare. This study investigated whether government size, measured as general government final consumption expenditure as a share of Gross Domestic Product, matters for quality of life, proxied by life expectancy at birth, in twelve ECOWAS countries over the period 2000 to 2025. After confirming cross sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, and a mixed order of integration among the series, the study employed the Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test and the Method of Moments Quantile Regression, complemented by the Augmented Mean Group estimator. The results revealed bidirectional Granger causality between government size and life expectancy. Government size showed a positive average association with life expectancy; this association was statistically insignificant among countries at the lowest quantiles of life expectancy, became significant at the 5 percent level from the 40th quantile, and was strongest at the top of the distribution. The Augmented Mean Group results revealed considerable heterogeneity, with government size significantly and positively associated with life expectancy in Senegal and Sierra Leone but negatively associated with it in Benin, Cape Verde, Guinea, and Togo, and only marginally so in Ghana. Because the estimates capture conditional associations rather than definitive causal effects, the findings are interpreted with caution. The study concludes that government size does not relate to quality of life uniformly across ECOWAS and recommends that countries with comparatively low life expectancy prioritise targeted and efficiency driven public spending, that fiscal and health authorities coordinate policy given the feedback relationship identified, and that regional bodies such as ECOWAS avoid prescribing a uniform government expenditure target across member states.
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