Primary School Enrollment Rates Research Articles

Enhancing Professional Development for Science Teachers in Selected Elementary Schools in Suakoko Town, Bong County, Liberia

This paper probes into the multifaceted issues surrounding violence against women and challenges to girls' education in Liberia. Coomaraswamy's 2002 research underscored the role of cultural behaviors in family structures contributing significantly to violence against women. King and Winthrop's 2015 study explored factors such as poverty, gender norms, and cultural expectations, contributing to discussions on fair educational opportunities. Cunningham et al.'s 2023 research delved into gender disparities across economic, educational, healthcare, and political spheres, employing a women's empowerment perspective. Theoretical frameworks rooted in gender and social norm theories were employed to understand the impact of cultural identity on preschool girls' education in Liberia. The study focused on evaluating negative effects on preschool girls in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions to create a supportive environment. Coomaraswamy's 2002 insistence on rejecting the use of cultural considerations to justify violence against girls resonates globally. The study also highlighted disparities in girls' primary school enrollment rates in the region compared to the global average, emphasizing the urgency of addressing educational inequalities. Overall, this paper contributes valuable insights for policymakers, educators, and communities, advocating for positive change in Liberia's educational landscape and women's empowerment.

The Negative Effects of Cultural Identity on Preschool Girls in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba Counties of Liberia

This paper probes into the multifaceted issues surrounding violence against women and challenges to girls' education in Liberia. Coomaraswamy's 2002 research underscored the role of cultural behaviors in family structures contributing significantly to violence against women. King and Winthrop's 2015 study explored factors such as poverty, gender norms, and cultural expectations, contributing to discussions on fair educational opportunities. Cunningham et al.'s 2023 research delved into gender disparities across economic, educational, healthcare, and political spheres, employing a women's empowerment perspective. Theoretical frameworks rooted in gender and social norm theories were employed to understand the impact of cultural identity on preschool girls' education in Liberia. The study focused on evaluating negative effects on preschool girls in Bong, Lofa, and Nimba counties, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions to create a supportive environment. Coomaraswamy's 2002 insistence on rejecting the use of cultural considerations to justify violence against girls resonates globally. The study also highlighted disparities in girls' primary school enrollment rates in the region compared to the global average, emphasizing the urgency of addressing educational inequalities. Overall, this paper contributes valuable insights for policymakers, educators, and communities, advocating for positive change in Liberia's educational landscape and women's empowerment.

Legislature size and welfare: Evidence from Brazil

AbstractHow does legislature size impact public service provision? Despite the importance of institutional design for democratic governance, the effect of legislative features on citizen welfare remains little understood. In this article, we use a formal model to show that increasing legislature size improves public goods delivery. We argue that changes in bargaining costs depend on whether additional legislators share the executive's party affiliation: More opposition members reduce the equilibrium public goods provision, while more government‐aligned members increase it. We test this theory by exploiting sharp discontinuities in city‐council size in Brazil. We show that an additional city councilor has a 91% chance of belonging to the mayoral coalition, and this significantly improves primary school enrollment and infant mortality rates. To explore possible mechanisms, we surveyed 174 former city councilors and analyzed 346,553 bills proposed between 2005 and 2008. This article has implications for the design of representative institutions.

The impact of education on income inequality: A comparative analysis of Nigeria and South Africa

Nigeria is plagued with the problem of poverty, and this is exacerbated by the problem of income inequality. Inequality has also limited the opportunities of individuals in Nigeria as Valentine (1968) said that “the essence of poverty is inequality; in slightly different words the meaning of poverty can be said to be deprivation”. The Gini coefficient of Nigeria lies between 40 and 60% (Bakare A.S, 2012). Also, South Africa has one of the worst cases of income inequality in the World, As South Africa’s Gini index increased from 0.64 in 1995 to 0.69 in the year 2005 which is one of the highest in the world. Studies will be carried out on both countries to further understanding on the relationship between income inequality and Education. With the aid of descriptive and empirical analysis, this study aims at identifying factors that are responsible for the high levels of income inequality, with a focus on Education growth in Nigeria and South Africa. Both countries will be compared using time series data spanning from 1981 to 2016. The study examines the effect of education on income inequality in Nigeria and South Africa and examines if a long-run relationship exists between education and income inequality in Nigeria and South Africa. The Johansen Cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model were applied. The result of the Johansen Cointegration shows that there is a long-run relationship between the independent variables –Inflation, Real Gross Domestic Product, Foreign Direct Investment and Primary School Enrollment rate in Nigeria and South Africa. Findings also attest to the impact of education on income inequality in Nigeria but not in South Africa as further research showed that the income inequality situation in South Africa was connected to racial segregation. It was concluded that the government should devote more attention to this dwindling sector so as to reduce the income gap in the Country.

A glass ceiling at the playhouse? Gender gaps in public and private preschool enrollment in India

India has reduced male-biased gender gaps in primary school enrollment and progression rates in recent years. However, patterns of early childhood education enrollment, selection of preschool, and related gender gaps remain inadequately studied. This study uses data from India’s National Family Health Survey (2019–2021), which collected preschool information for children aged 2–4 years, to examine female-male gaps in preschool enrollment. An estimated 40% of children were enrolled in preschools, and among them, 28% were enrolled in private preschools, with substantial variation across states. State, district, and household fixed-effects regressions, which accounted for a wide range of background characteristics of children, show that while preschool enrollment rates were 3.6–4.1% higher among girls than boys, girls were 9.3–16.7% less likely to be enrolled in higher quality private preschools. Using a mother fixed-effects regression, we found that while there was no gender gap in siblings’ preschool enrolment rates, girls were 18.6% less likely to be enrolled in private preschool than their brothers. The relative bias towards males in private preschool enrollment decreased with standard of living and maternal schooling levels. The findings indicate gender discrimination in enrollment in higher quality private preschool against young girls.

Policies for increasing school completion rates for the poor

Human capital accumulated through education is a key factor in increasing individual income. Therefore, policies that aid in increasing school enrollment and completion rates among the poor are essential for poverty alleviation. Despite the fact that primary school enrollment rates in developing countries have increased, there remains a significant gap in school completion rates. This study focuses on the decisions individuals make regarding completing their education to obtain future job-related skills. We clarify factors that increase school enrollment and completion rates and indicate the effectiveness and priority of policies to increase the rates through a simple model. Our findings suggest that school policies have limited impact on increasing school enrollment and completion rates, particularly among the poor, who tend to have a high discount rate for the future and focus on the current situation. Therefore, policies that aim to reduce their discount rate should be prioritized. Moreover, we found that extending learning hours at school has a negative impact on the school completion rates of students from poor families. Therefore, policies aimed at improving individual learning environments are effective in increasing rates, especially for the poor. These findings have important implications for policymakers and education practitioners seeking to improve education outcomes and alleviate poverty, especially in developing countries.

Impact of human capital investment on economic growth in Nigeria: Econometric approach of Autoregressive Distributive Lag Model (ARDL)

The study examined the impact of human capital investment on the economic growth in Nigeria over a period of 1985 to 2021. Specifically, the study sought to: i) determine the impact of government expenditure on education on the economic growth in Nigeria; ii) ascertain the impact of government expenditure on health on the economic growth in Nigeria; iii) evaluate the impact of tertiary school enrolment rate on the economic growth in Nigeria. The variables of the study consist of real Gross domestic Product (RGDP), inflation rate (INFLA), exchange rate (EXCHR), education government expenditure (EGE), health government expenditure (HGE), primary School enrolment rate (PSER), secondary school enrolment rate (SSER) and tertiary school enrolment rate (TSER), child mortality rate (CMR) and life expectancy at birth (LIFE). The data analytical techniques were descriptive Statistics, Augmented Dickey-Fuller Unit Root test and Autoregressive distributive Lag Model. The following are the major findings of the study: i) education expenditure (EGE) had 43% positive and insignificant impact on the economic growth in Nigeria [P-value (0.8508) was greater than its significant value (0.05]; ii) health expenditure (HGE) had 8% positive and insignificant impact on economic growth in Nigeria [P-value (0.1925) was greater than its significant value (0.05]; iii) tertiary school enrolment rate (TSER) had 48% positive and insignificant impact on the economic growth in Nigeria [P-value (0.2660) was greater than its significant value (0.05]. This study concludes that the human capital investment has positive and insignificant impact on the economic growth in Nigeria. The study recommends that government should start and sustain allocating 20 percent increase of funds to capital expenditure on education to provide facilities such as libraries, laboratory equipment, computers and modern learning equipment. Government should attract international donor agencies like World Bank, United Nations and UNESCO to help and put funds into the educational sector.

Impact of the human papillomavirus vaccine in low-resource settings

Impact of the human papillomavirus vaccine in low-resource settings

Effect of Population Growth on Human Capital Development in Nigeria

Despite several studies on the impact of human capital development on economic development and studies on the impact of population growth on economic development, only a few studies have directly linked the impact of population growth on human capital development. In view of this, this study analyzes the causal relationship between population growth and human capital development from the period of 1970-2020. The primary school enrolment rate was set as a proxy for human development capital and the population growth rate used to measure population growth. In carryout the study, the Augmented Dicker Fuller test, was used to test for stationarity. The two variables were stationary at levels. The granger causality test was then carried out and results revealed bi-directional causality in that population growth granger caused human capital development and vice versa. This is a preliminary study that hopes to spur up more studies in this direction with specific interest to Nigeria. The policy recommendation is for massive investment in human capital along Lucas postulation and UNESCO education policy for developing nations like Nigeria.

Women's Empowerment Matters: Evidence from the Health and Education Sectors in Developing Worlds

This study examines the effect of female empowerment on child development in developing countries. Using comprehensive panel data from seventy-eight developing countries between 2000 and 2018, this research assesses the impact of political and economic empowerment of females on the health and education of children. The major findings include (1) that GDP per capita, health expenditure, and the official development assistance are not significantly reducing immunization, child mortality, and primary school enrollment; (2) that women's empowerment in political and economic fields is not significantly affecting the above-mentioned dependent variables; and (3) that when those two kinds of explanatory variables interact, women's empowerment is positively associated with immunization rate and primary school enrollment rate in countries with an income level lower than 1,500–2,000 USD, mainly located in East Africa. Such findings suggest that in certain economic levels, female empowerment and child development policies are complementary and should go hand in hand.

The Impact of Government Educational Expenditure Policy and School Enrolment on Economic Growth in Ghana (1970-2017)

This study examines the impact of government educational expenditure and school enrolment on economic growth in Ghana over the period 1970-2017. The research employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique based on the results of the Phillips-Perron unit root test. The findings show that government educational expenditure within the period (1970-2017) has an insignificant effect on economic growth in both the long-run and short-term. It is also revealed that while primary and secondary school enrolment rates positively and significantly drive growth in both time periods, the effect of tertiary education on economic growth is negative and significant in the long-run. The article recommends that proper mechanisms should be put in place to deal with embezzlement of funds in the educational sector. It also recommends construction of policies that will promote free equitable access to quality secondary education that will ensure education for all in Ghana including individuals from low-income families and involvement of tertiary students in practical programmes that will ensure the acquisition of innovative skills hence appropriate optimisation of human capital trained from the Ghanaian education system. This will enhance proper economic returns from the education system.

The impact of FDI on human capital development in SACU countries

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how FDI trickle down to human capital development in SACU member states.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal research design and feasible general least squares was used over the periods 1990 and 2018.FindingsThere is supporting evidence that FDI enhances human capital when primary school enrolment rate is used. However, the reverse holds for the secondary level of education. It can be argued that although FDI exhibits a positive effect on primary education, optimal spillovers to human capital development has not been realized. An indication that certain level of human capital may be required to ensure the optimal benefit of FDI or the types of current FDI does not enhance FDI-led-human capital hypothesis.Practical implicationsThe negative effect of FDI toward secondary level of education could be an indication of a weak absorptive capacity. SACU's current dominance of FDI activities toward extractive industries could limit potential benefit of FDI due to capacity constraints. Practical policy implications indicate that SACU member states need to ensure that it attracts FDI toward smart investment that enhances human capital development.Social implicationsThere is need to a gear FDI firms toward corporate social responsibilities that will stimulate secondary education.Originality/valueThe novelty of this paper is twofold. First, it focuses on SACU countries where majority of the people are trapped with poverty and inequality issues. Second, SACU member states have used greenfield FDI as a policy instrument to enhance human capital. However, human capital link remains weak. This creates a need to search for smart FDIs that are committed toward community transformation through human capital development.

Primary School Enrolment, Public Spending on Education and Economic Growth in Nigeria

This paper investigates the effect of primary school enrolment and public education spending on Nigeria’s economic growth using the Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) for the period 1987 and 2017. The coefficient of the error correction model (ECM) reveals a negative sign of -0.304216 which implies that any disequilibrium in the system in the previous year will be corrected at a speed of 30.42 percent annually. Both the short run and long run models were nicely fitted with high coefficients of determination (R2) of about 62 percent. The analysis of the result also showed that primary school enrolment rate and public expenditure on education increased but their effects were less impactful on Nigeria’s economic growth. These findings perhaps could be attributed to the poor state of classrooms across, poor teacher-pupil ratio, unstable macroeconomic environment, dearth of instructional materials and more. The paper thus recommend that there should be re-design of educational strategies by the government to include enrolment campaigns, alternative learning programs, pro-poor economic incentive and more, especially at the basic education level and also increased her budgetary allocation to education sector in line with UNESCO recommendation of about 26 percent. Received: 9 June 2021 / Accepted: 28 September 2021 / Published: 5 September 2021

The Determinants of Child Labor in MINT Countries: Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

There are many studies in the literature on child labor. However, most of these studies are based on statistics on children, or the factors that cause child labor are explained as economic concepts. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reasons why school-age children adopt the role of "child laborer" and determine the effects of these factors. In this context, in order to examine the factors affecting child labor in developing countries, this study has tried to determine the factors causing child labor with dynamic panel data analysis using MINT Countries data for the period of 1990-2018. The countries’ development levels and poverty are closely related to child labor. For this reason, the human development index is added to the model as a dependent variable. Considering the studies in the literature, population growth, primary school enrollment rate, primary school duration, and labor force participation rate variables were added to the model as independent variables. At the end of the analysis, all variables were found to be statistically significant. The effect of population growth and the number of primary school students on the human development index was negative, while the effect of other variables was positive.

Primary school enrolment rate, completion rate and gender balancing in Nigeria; the financial inclusion perspective

PurposeThe bedrock of growth in education is at the primary/basic education level, hence there is need to ensure that the populace not only enrolls but complete their education as well as maintain gender balancing. Financial inclusion is essential in achieving financial development which if properly tailored should result in economic growth and development. Education is an important development parameter, therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess if financial inclusiveness enhances primary school enrolment, completion and gender balancing.Design/methodology/approachIn order to ascertain if financial inclusion (financial penetration, access and usage) enhances primary school education (primary school enrolment and completion) and gender balancing (primary school female-to-male ratio), the study employed the vector error correction modeling (VECM) to capture both short- and long-run dynamics of cointegration equations and also, ascertain how the long-run deviations are deemed corrected in the short run.FindingsThe findings of financial inclusion showed a significant positive effect on primary school enrollment but regarding primary school completion rate and female-to-male ratio, the responses to financial inclusion measures showed a completely negative effect. From the foregoing, it is not just sufficient to enroll school children but that they complete their basic primary education, and equally ensure that the males are not favored over the females so as to achieve gender balance literacy in the country.Originality/valueThe study focuses on how financial inclusion engenders admission, graduation and gender balancing in primary school education as the bedrock to formal education in Nigeria.

Skills-adjusted human capital shows rising global gap

Human capital, broadly defined as the skills acquired through formal education, is acknowledged as one of the key drivers of economic growth and social development. However, its measurement for the working-age populations, on a global scale and over time, is still unsatisfactory. Most indicators either only consider the quantity dimension of education and disregard the actual skills or are demographically inconsistent by applying the skills of the young cohorts in school to represent the skills of the working-age population at the same time. In the case of rapidly expanding or changing school systems, this assumption is untenable. However, an increasing number of countries have started to assess the literacy skills of their adult populations by age and sex directly. Drawing on this literacy data, and by using demographic backprojection and statistical estimation techniques, we here present a demographically consistent indicator for adult literacy skills, the skills in literacy adjusted mean years of schooling (SLAMYS). The measure is given for the population aged 20 to 64 in 185 countries and for the period 1970 to 2015. Compared to the conventional mean years of schooling (MYS)-which has strongly increased for most countries over the past decades, and in particular among poor countries-the trends in SLAMYS exhibit a widening global skills gap between low- and high-performing countries.

FDI and educational outcomes in developing countries

This study explores the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on educational outcomes in developing countries. FDI might affect education in host countries through different channels, but this topic has not been systematically studied. Using data from 80 developing countries over 1980–2014, we find that inward FDI promotes primary school enrollment and completion rates for boys and girls. In contrast, inward FDI has no significant impact on male secondary and tertiary enrollment, but a significantly negative effect on female secondary and tertiary enrollment. We also find that FDI from OECD countries promotes secondary and tertiary enrollment rates while non-OECD FDI does not, which can result from the larger spillovers of OECD FDI due to higher R&D content. In addition, considerable heterogeneity exists in the effect of FDI on educational outcomes across various host regions, which might be related to the different sectoral distribution of FDI in these host regions.

Urban Informality, Post-Disaster Management, and Challenges to Gender-Responsive Planning in Haiti Since the 2010 Earthquake

Haitian officials, in line with most country leaders around the world, announced a series of health, hygiene and safety precautions following the COVID-19 global pandemic early in 2020. The tiny nation (10,714 square miles) situated on the island of Hispaniola, still recovering from the devastating 2010 earthquake, which claimed the lives of close to two hundred thousand people, seemed prepared to take on the challenges of COVID-19. Businesses and schools immediately closed, face masks and hand sanitizers were distributed by the thousands. But the effects of emergency injunctions that were not geared towards capacity-building, but rather prevention of rapid infectious disease transmission, could prove debilitating for the impoverished nation over the long-term. Primary and secondary school enrollment rates in Haiti are at an all-time low, and projections for the Haitian economy are dismal (-3.5% GDP growth 2020f) (World Bank 2020: 27). As a retrospective study, this paper conducts a critical quantitative and qualitative analysis of humanitarian aid, gender-based violence, and urbanism in Haiti, revealing that gender-responsive planning has a greater role to play in state-led disaster management plans and procedures for achieving long-term equity and sustainable economic growth.

The Non-Democratic Roots of Mass Education: Evidence from 200 Years

Because primary education is often conceptualized as a pro-poor redistributive policy, a common argument is that democratization increases its provision. But primary education can also serve the goals of autocrats, including redistribution, promoting loyalty, nation-building, and/or industrialization. To examine the relationship between democratization and education provision empirically, I leverage new datasets covering 109 countries and 200 years. Difference-in-differences and interrupted time series estimates find that, on average, democratization had no or little impact on primary school enrollment rates. When unpacking this average null result, I find that, consistent with median voter theories, democratizationcanlead to an expansion of primary schooling, but the key condition under which it does—when a majority lacked access to primary schooling before democratization—rarely holds. Around the world, state-controlled primary schooling emerged a century before democratization, and in three-fourths of countries that democratized, a majority already had access to primary education before democratization.

Human Capital and Environmental Sustainability

Human capital has been shown as an important determinant of environmental performance at the firm and province levels. We try to identify the impact of human capital on environmental performance at the country level. To address potential endogeneity and measurement errors regarding human capital, we use the primary school enrollment rate a century ago as an instrument for today’s human capital stock. The instrumental variable estimation, based on a sample of 72 countries, shows that human capital has a statistically significant effect on the Environmental Performance Index, a composite measure of national environmental performance, primarily through improving biodiversity, habitat, and sustainable agriculture, all of which are the indicators related to environmental sustainability. These findings from cross-country analysis are broadly consistent with those of firm-level or province-level studies, emphasizing the role of human capital in enhancing the awareness of and compliance with environmental regulations, thus leading to an improvement in environmental performance.