This study examined the relationship between human capital development and poverty in Nigeria using data
spanning 1960-2009. The human capital development variable was measured using conventional variables i.e.
education and health, with government expenditures on education and health being used as the proxies. Other
variables on communication, transportation and utility were used as control. A readily available poverty measure,
gross domestic product per capita was used to capture poverty status. This is based on the fact that poverty is
mostly measured in monetary terms captured by income or consumption per capita or household in the absence
of direct primary data observation. After carrying out the diagnostic tests, the cointegration analysis carried out
proved that, to some extent, a cointegrating relationship exists between the poverty measure and human capital
development indicators. However, the Granger causality estimation results show that both education and health
expenditures are fundamental in reducing poverty level based on the uni-directional causality while no causality
runs from poverty status to the indicators.