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Does Schooling Promote Economic Growth?
Author(s) -
Gutema Paulos,
Bekele Mekonnen
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
african development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-8268
pISSN - 1017-6772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1017-6772.2004.00096.x
Subject(s) - human capital , economics , endogenous growth theory , argument (complex analysis) , per capita , per capita income , capital (architecture) , capital deepening , growth model , demographic economics , macroeconomics , capital formation , economic growth , financial capital , geography , sociology , population , biochemistry , chemistry , demography , archaeology
This paper revisits the debate on schooling and economic growth with particular reference to the case of sub‐Saharan Africa. Following the endogenous growth model developed by Lucas (1988) that considers human capital as one factor of production and schooling as a means of human capital accumulation, two results of schooling are explicitly stated: accumulation of privately owned and publicly owned human capital. By developing a growth estimating equation containing these two types of schooling results from the model and confronting it with empirical data, the hypothesis that schooling has got growth effect is tested. The analytic result suggests that in the indicated economies, for the period covered by the study (1966–2000), schooling that leads to accumulation of publicly owned human capital is associated with per capita income growth. Likewise, the analysis provides supporting evidence for the argument that primary schooling level is more associated with growth than other levels of schooling.