Government Expenditure and Economic Development in Ondo State
Moyinoluwa Esther OLUTAYO
This study investigates the effect of government expenditure on economic development (proxied by internal generated revenue (IGR) in Ondo state over a five-year period from 2020 to 2024. The analysis focuses on three key expenditure categories education, health and agriculture and employs descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and multiple regression to evaluate their relationship with revenue performance. The descriptive results show considerable variability in IGR, while spending on education and health remained consistently higher than agricultural expenditure. Correlation analysis reveals strong positive associations between IGR and each expenditure category, although these relationships were not statistically significant. The regression model demonstrates a high explanatory power, indicating that 89.3 percent of the variation in IGR is jointly explained by the three expenditure variables. The findings further show that education expenditure has a statistically significant positive effect on IGR, whereas health and agriculture expenditures exhibit positive but statistically insignificant effects. The study concludes that while all three sectors contribute to revenue performance, investment in education plays the most decisive role. It recommends sustained and strategic funding across these sectors, with priority given to education to enhance internally generated revenue.
Keywords: Internally generated revenue, agricultural expenditure, Ondo State, education expenditure, health expenditure