EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS IN NIGERIA
AN ARDL APPROACH
Abstract
This paper examined the relationship between education and economic growth in Nigeria. Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model on annual time series data from 1981 to 2022, the secondary data were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistcal Bulletin and Global Economy website. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) tests determine the stationarity of the variables. Estimates of the bound cointegration test indicates statistically significant result which suggests the existence of the long run relationship among the variables. The results revealed that the Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) has a speed adjustment of a self-mean reverting ability of 29% within a year. In both the short run and the long run, primary education has a negative and statistically significant impact on the real gross domestic product while both secondary and tertiary education have positive influence on the real gross domestic product. Thus, education is important in accelerating economic growth in the country. Policy makers should focus on economic policies that could tackle high primary school dropouts in the country.






