Human capital and economic growth in Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract The study empirically examines the nexus between human capital and economic growth in Nigeria between 1981 and 2017. This is predated by poor policy impact across the key sectors of the economy, such as education and health that would have transformed productivity to economic in Nigeria. In order to address this ugly happening, the study therefore employed vector autoregressive and Johansen techniques. The results disclosed that the estimated coefficients of human capital have long-run significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria. Also, the diagnostic tests were used to check the validity of the techniques adopted in the study. Interestingly, results from normality test, VEC residual serial correlation LM tests and VEC residual heteroskedasticity tests confirm the justification and validity of the estimated results obtained in this research. Drawing way forward, this study therefore recommends the need to sustain economic in Nigeria through increase budgetary allocation to education and health sector to boost human capital skills needed to drive knowledge-based economy. Also, government should establish special agencies with the responsibility of improving the skills and capabilities of human capital across all educational levels of the federation so as to sustain growth in the long run.

Keywords

• Human capital
• Economic growth
• Policy