A Comparative Analysis of Effects of Education on Sub-Saharan Africa's Economic Growth
Abstract
This study aims to analyze and to compare the effects of various levels of education on the economic growth of some selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) between 1980 and 2015.It is hypothesized in the study that various levels of education have significant positive impacts on the economic growth of some selected sub-Saharan Africa countries over the stated period. Fixed effect Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) and a robust version of System Generalized Methods of Moment (SYSGMM) are adopted as model estimating techniques. Results from the LSDV model indicate increasing positive impacts of various levels of education on the economic growth of the thirty selected SSA countries. This trend of significance is corrected in the dynamic model, but with negative effects on the lower levels of education on growth while higher education output which negatively impacted on growth is reversed. The study systematically compares the effects of education on growth when higher education is included and when it is excluded both at the enrolment and output level in the regression model. We found different results at each instance for the various levels. Therefore, the major conclusion of this study is that higher education human capital at the output level appears to be the most significant of all the levels of education. However, this advantage enjoyed by higher education could have been as a result of cumulative effects from other levels of education over time. We, therefore, conclude that higher education should be supported with strong education policy implementation, as this could have a positive impact on SSA economic growth.
Downloads
References
Agiomirgianaskis, G., Asterious, D. & Monastiriotis, V. (2002). Human Capital and Economic Growth Revisited: a Dynamic Panel data study. Journal of International Advances in Economic Research, 8(3), 177–187,doi: https ://doi. org/10. 1007/ bf02 29 7955 Anyanwu, J. & Erhijakpor, A. E. (2007). Working Paper 92-Education Expenditures and School Enrolment in Africa: Illustrations from Nigeria and Other SANE Countries (No. 227). https://ideas.repec.org/p/adb/adbwps/227.html
Appiah, E. N. & McMahon, W. (2002). The Social Outcomes of Education and Feedbacks on Growth in Africa. Journal of Development Studies, 38(4), 27–68, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380412331322411
Arellano, M. & Bond, S. (1991). Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations. The Review of Economic Studies, 58(2), 277-297, doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2297968 Artadi, E. V. & Sala-i-Martin, X. (2003). The economic tragedy of the XXth century: growth in Africa (No. w9865). National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w9865
Bai, J. (2009). Panel Data Models with Interactive Fixed Effects. Econometrica, 77(4), 1229-1279.
Barro, R. & Jong-Wha L. (2013). A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950-2010. Journal of Development Economics, 104, 184–198, doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.10.001. Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., Chan, K. J. & Luca, D. L. (2014). Higher Education and Economic Growth in Africa. International Journal of African Higher Education, 1(1), 22-57, doi: https://doi.org/10.6017/ijahe.v1i1.5643.
Chi, W. (2008). The Role of Human Capital in China's Economic Development: Review and New Evidence. China Economic Review, 19(3), 421–436.
Feenstra, R. C., Robert, I. & Marcel, P. T. (2015). The Next Generation of the Penn World Table. American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150–3182, doi: 10.1257/aer.20130954.
Gemmell, N. (1996). Evaluating the Impacts of Human Capital Stock and Accumulation on Economic Growth: Some New Evidence. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 58, 9-28.
Glewwe, P., Maiga, E. & Zheng, H. (2014). The Contribution of Education to Economic Growth: A Review of the Evidence, with Special Attention and an Application to Sub-Saharan Africa. World Development, 59, 379-393,doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.01.021 Gyimah-Brempong, K., Paddison, O. & Mitiku, W. (2006). Higher Education and Economic Growth in Africa. The Journal of Development Studies, 42(3), 509-529.https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380600576490
Hausman, J. A. (1978). Specification Tests in Econometrics. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 3, 1251-1271.
Holland, D., Liadze, I., Rienzo, C. & Wilkinson, D. (2013). The relationship between graduates and economic growth across countries. BIS Research Paper, 110.
Jones, C. I. (1996). Human Capital, Ideas, and Economic Growth, Mimeo, Stanford: Stanford University.
Krueger, A. B. & Lindahl, M. (2000). Education for growth: Why and for Whom? National Bureau of Economic Research.
Lucas, R. E. (1988). On the Mechanics of Economic Development. Journal of Monetary Economics, 22(1), 3-42, https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7
Lin, T. (2006). Alternative Measure for Education Variable in an Empirical Economic Growth Model: is Primary Education Less Important? Economics Bulletin, 15, 1-6. Mankiw, G., Romer D. & Weil. D. (1992). A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 407-437. McMahon, W. (1998). Education and Growth in East Asia. Economics of Education Review, 17(2), 159-172.
Nation United. (2012). Millennium Development Goal Report. We Can End Poverty in 2050. https://doi.org/10.18356/20fbb5a4-en
Nelson, R. R. & Phelps, E. S. (1966). Investment in Humans, Technological Diffusion, and Economic Growth. The American economic review, 56(1/2), 69-75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1821269
Olamosu, B. & Andy, W. (2015). Africa rising? The Economic History of Sub-Saharan Africa, from http://isj.org.uk/africa-rising/ Pegkas, P. (2014). The Link between Educational Levels and Economic Growth: A Neoclassical Approach for the Case of Greece. International Journal of Applied Economics, 11(2), 38-54.
Petrakis, P. E. & Stamatakis, D. (2002). Growth and Educational Levels: a Comparative Analysis. Economics of Education Review, 21(5), 513–521. Romer, P. (1990). Endogenous Technological Change. Journal of Political Economy, 98, 71-102.
Roodman, D. (2009). A Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 71(1), 135-158. Shaihani, M., Harisb, A., Ismaila, N. & Saida, R. (2011).Long Run and Short Run Effects on Education Levels: Case in Malaysia. International Journal of Economic Research, 2(6) 77-87. Solow, R. M. (1956). A contribution to the theory of economic growth. The quarterly journal of economics, 70(1), 65-94. faculty.smu.edu/tosang/pdf/Solow_1956.pdf
Tallman, E. & Wang. P. (1994). Human Capital and Endogenous Growth: Evidence from Taiwan. Journal of Monetary Economics, 34, 101-124.
Tang, Q., Nasiopoulos, P. & Ward, R. K. (2008). Compensation of Requantization and Interpolation Errors in MPEG-2 to H. 264 Transcoding. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 18(3). 314-325, 10.1109/TCSVT.2008.918443.
Villa, S. (2005). Determinants of Growth in Italy. A Time Series Analysis, Working Paper, University of Foggia, Italy.
Voon, J. P. (2001). Measuring Social Returns to Higher Education Investment in Hong Kong: Production Function Approach. Economics of Education Review, 20(5), 503–10, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-7757(00)00021-2. World Fact Book. (2017). American Central Intelligent Agency.
Copyright (c) 2017 Akinola Gbenga Wilfred, Gerry Koye Bokana
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author (s) should affirm that the material has not been published previously. It has not been submitted and it is not under consideration by any other journal. At the same time author (s) need to execute a publication permission agreement to assume the responsibility of the submitted content and any omissions and errors therein. After submission of a revised paper in the light of suggestions of the reviewers, editorial team edits and formats manuscripts to bring uniformity and standardization in published material.
This work will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and under condition of the license, users are free to read, copy, remix, transform, redistribute, download, print, search or link to the full texts of articles and even build upon their work as long as they credit the author for the original work. Moreover, as per journal policy author (s) hold and retain copyrights without any restrictions.
