Determinants of Human Capital Development in Nigeria: An ARDL Methodology

Abstract

The research work analyses the likely determinants of human capital development in Nigeria. Methodologically, the Autoregressive Distributed Lagged Model (ADRL) was modeled to examine the nature of relationship, where Human Capital Development Index (HCI) is presumed to depend upon changes in various list of Independent Variables estimators which were estimated over the period 1990 to 2018. Data were sourced from the National Bureau of Statistics, Word Development Indicators (WDI) as well as those provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. Empirical results showed that the relationship between tertiary school enrolment and human capital development was positive but insignificant. Therelationship between government expenditure on education (GXE), government expenditure on health (GXH), life expectancy (LI) on human capital development (HC)was positive and significant while the relationship between Fertility Rate and human capital development in Nigeria was negative and significant. This succinctly indicates that increased fertility rate with attendant population growth can hamper human capital development. Furthermore, a trade-off exists between increasing fertility rate and the pursuit of human capital development. The research recommended increased budgetary allocation to the educational and health sector in Nigeria.