Human Capital Development, Employment and Economic Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

Human Capital Development has been the crux of any nation’s development and it has lasting benefits and spiral effects. Nigeria has witnessed increased economic growth without a corresponding increase in employment and human capital development indicators. It is on this ground that, the study set to examine the effect of human capital development on economic growth through employment in Nigeria from 1986-2021. The study is anchored on four theories viz; the Solow growth, the Keynes employment model, the Endogenous growth model, and Human Capital Theory. The study relies strictly on secondary data sources further, the study used descriptive and inferential statistics methods. Using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test (ADF), stationarity test results show that all variables were stationary at first difference. The study further employed variance decomposition, impulse response Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model to test for Hypotheses. The study found a positive and weak transmission between human capital development and economic growth through employment the result is significant at 5% significant level. The study concluded that there is insufficient funding of human capital to spur economic growth through employment. Therefore the study recommends that government should increase expenditure on education and encourage and promote academic excellence with appropriate remunerations such as granting scholarships, employment, training, and re-training of excellent students.