The effects of education on economic growth in Kenya
Abstract
The key reason for carrying out this research was to offer a response to the fundamental
question as to whether education at different levels and economic growth in Kenya have a
relationship and if so, how significant the relationship is.
Empirical evidence is not conclusive on this question and conflicting findings have been
given by various empirical work. The research was motivated by the belief that is so
deeply engrained in the Kenyan society that education contributes significantly not only
to personal progress but also to national progress.
The emphasis is seen in the huge allocations of the national budget to the Ministry of
Education. In the 2012/2013 budget, for instance, Ministry of Education got the second
largest share of the budget at 21%, after energy, infrastructure and ICT which got 24% ,
but this was on account of the ongoing projects in the energy and roads sector. This
paper uses time series technique to probe the relationship between real GDP growth rate
in Kenya on one hand and primary school, secondary school and university enrolment on
the other hand. The period of interest is the period 1980 to 2010.
The estimated co-coefficients depict the relationship between our variables of interest.
The results show that there exists a favorable and significant connection between real
GDP growth and the three independent variables namely primary school, secondary
school and university enrolments. The co-efficient of regression for primary school,
secondary school and university enrolments are 11.851, 1.267, and 1.463 respectively
showing that increases in these variables will result into increases in real GDP growth
rate.
The research therefore recommends that more investment should be put in education and
that both the national and county governments should focus on the development of
education at all levels.
Publisher
University of Nairobi