The human capital-economic growth nexus in SSA countries: What can strengthen the relationship?

Tapuwa Karambakuwa, Ronney Ncwadi and Andrew Phiri

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The World Bank has recently placed increasing emphasis on the role of human capital development in facilitating economic development in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region. Our study examines the impact of human capital on economic growth for a selected sample of 9 SSA countries between 1980 and 2016 using a panel econometric approach. Interestingly enough, our empirical analysis shows an insignificant effect of human capital on economic growth for our selected sample. These findings remain unchanged even after adding interactive terms to human capital which are representative of government spending as well as foreign direct investment. Nevertheless, we establish a positive and significant effect of the interactive term between urbanization and human capital on economic growth, a result which emphasizes the importance of developing urbanized, ‘smart’, technologically-driven cities within the SSA region as a platform towards strengthening the impact of human capital- economic growth relationship.

Keywords: Human capital, economic growth; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries; foreign direct investment (FDI); Government spending; Urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C23 C51 J24 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-gro
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The human capital–economic growth nexus in SSA countries: what can strengthen the relationship? (2020)
Working Paper: The human capital-economic growth nexus in SSA countries: What can strengthen the relationship? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:95199

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