Government Educational Expenditure and Human Capital Development in West African Countries

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue VI, June 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Government Educational Expenditure and Human Capital Development in West African Countries

Samuel B. Adewumi, Ngozi B. Enebe

University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

Abstract:-The current study focused on the impact of government education – social expenditure (expenditure on education and health) on human capital development in West African countries. The research was conducted with variables from 13 countries in the region, which comprises of Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Senegal, Niger, Mali, Liberia, Gambia, Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone; with variables from 1985 – 2016. The result obtained shows that increase government education and health expenditure have positive and significant impact on primary and secondary school enrolment. The Granger causality result also shows that there is bidirectional causality between government health expenditure and primary as well as secondary school enrolment. The result also shows that there is bidirectional causality between government educational expenditure and secondary school enrolment. The implication of this is that government of these countries must take adequate measures to ensure proper allocations and utilization of funds to these sectors in order to achieve a meaningful human capital development.

Key words: Government education expenditure, Health expenditure, Primary and Secondary school enrolment
Jel classification: H51, H52, J24

I. INTRODUCTION

Education, especially in the less developed countries (LDCs) had been argued to be a major factor in poverty reduction; and government expenditure on the educational sector as the catalyst in achieving equity and promoting economic growth and development (Barro, 1991; Hanushek, 1996; Schultz, 1995; Jung and Thorbecke, 2003). Mincer (1993) also emphasized that higher education attainment promotes high income earnings and increase job securities of workers. Education assumes to be one of the basic primary needs of every society and has been viewed as a crucial part for socio-economic development, since it supplies trained man power and form the basis for the attainment of other development goals (Akwe, 2014). According to Sen (1999), education is desired by both individuals and the society at large and education tends to have positive externality as individuals benefited directly from acquiring education – in form of increase in skills and productivity of the individual – and indirectly benefits the society in form of knowledge transfer (Enueme, 1999). Hence, the impact of educational development in societal building cannot be overemphasized.

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