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Abstract
Gender gap in life expectancy remains a crucial issue in Nigeria. The study examined the long run relationship between health spending and life expectancy of males and females in Nigeria. Health spending was disintegrated into public and private spending. The data which include public expenditure on health, private expenditure on health, public expenditure on health per capita, and private expenditure on health per capita were collected from World Development Indicators from 2000-2021. The stationarity properties of the data series were tested using Augmented Dickey Fuller unit root test. Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) was adopted to obtain the long-run estimates with four models varying proxies for robustness checks. Public expenditure on health regardless of proxy was negatively associated with both life expectancy of males and females. However, life expectancy was sensitive to the proxy of private expenditure used. Per capita private health spending was positively related to life expectancy of males and females while private health spending showed a negative but insignificant relationship. These results suggest that private health spending is a notable contributor to life expectancy in Nigeria irrespective of gender. Based on the findings, it is recommended that government re-evaluate healthcare financing to identify inefficiencies in order to address the current negative trends. Also, private sector investment in health should be encouraged using appropriate schemes and incentives.