University proximity at teenage years and educational attainment

George Agwu () and Oussama Ben Atta ()
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George Agwu: TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AE-FUNAI - Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo
Oussama Ben Atta: TREE - Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre de recherche de l'ESC Pau - ESC PAU - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce, Pau Business School

Working papers of Transitions Energétiques et Environnementales (TREE) from HAL

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of geographical proximity to universities on educational attainment in Nigeria. We relate individuals level of schooling obtained from three rounds of the Nigeria's Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) to spatial distance to university measured by pairing residential and university campuses GPS coordinates. To identify the effect of the distance to university, we exploit the theory of residential sorting to instrument residential proximity to university. Specifically, we instrument distance to university drawing on variations in households' proximity to state boundary posts and neighbourhood population density. The instrumental variable estimates show a negative and significant effect of distance revealing that geographical constraints during teenage years represent a barrier to the subsequent human capital acquisition. Additional results from a difference-indifference estimation strategy indicate that a large scale establishment of universities had beneficial trickle-down effects by decreasing the intention to drop out of secondary school, supporting evidence of the role of geographical constraints in the accumulation of human capital in Nigeria.

Keywords: Distance to university; Educational attainment; University attendance; School dropout; Nigeria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
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