Published
2020-02-26
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Development Aid and Human Capital Development in Nigeria: A Sector Level-Analysis
Iyabo Adeola Olanrele
Economic and Business Policy Department, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, Ibadan, Nigeria.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7498-8961
Segun Subair Awode
Economic and Business Policy Department, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, Ibadan, Nigeria.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3793-1805
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.501.2020.71.25.35
Keywords: Development aid, Human capital development, Government expenditures, Life expectancy, Primary school enrolment, ARDL, Nigeria.
Abstract
Developing countries are generally faced with financial gap and budget constraints, and as such are dependent on aids to meet basic social and economic responsibilities. However, there are increasing concerns regarding the effectiveness of aid in developing countries, owing to worsening social and economic outcomes despite the huge amount of aid received from donor countries and institutions. This study therefore examines the effects of sector specific aid such as: health aid and education aid on life expectancy and primary school enrolment rate respectively in Nigeria, controlling for the influence of government expenditures on health and education. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was adopted with annual data from 1981 to 2017. Findings revealed that health aid is beneficial as it significantly increases life expectancy by about 0.03%. Recurrent expenditure complemented health aid by increasing life expectancy by 0.03%. However, education aid is detrimental to primary school enrolment as it reduces the rate by 0.07%. Thus, it is concluded that education aid have not had the desired impact on education in Nigeria.