Africa’s Education Enigma? The Nigerian Story

Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere

No 3097, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In the last two decades, the social and economic benefits of formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa have been debated. Anecdotal evidence points to low returns to education in Africa. Unfortunately, there is limited econometric evidence to support these claims at the micro level. In this study, I focus on Nigeria a country that holds 1/5 of Africa’s population. I use instruments based on the exogenous timing of the implementation and withdrawal of free primary education across regions in this country to consistently estimate the returns to education in the late 1990s. The results show the average returns to education are particularly low in the 90s, in contrast to conventional wisdom for developing countries (2.8% for every extra year of schooling between 1997 and 1999). Surprisingly, I find no significant differences between OLS and IV estimates of returns to education when necessary controls are included in the wage equation. The low returns to education results shed new light on both the changes in demand for education in Nigeria and the increased emigration rates from African countries that characterized the 90s.

Keywords: Nigeria; instrumental variables; human capital; returns to education; schooling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I29 J24 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Journal of Development Economics, 2010, 91 (1), 128-139

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