Economic Growth and Gender Inequalities in Labor Force Participation and Education in Kenya

Abstract

The main development goal of Kenyan government is to raise economic growth and reduce gender inequality. However, majority of the Kenyans still remain in poverty and gender inequality is widening. To achieve its vision 2030, the government need deliberate win-win policies that aim at reducing gender inequality and raising economic growth. To provide the relevant information necessary for designing these policies, this study sought to investigate the effect of gender inequality in education and labor force participation on economic growth using time series data for the period between 1990 and 2012. The study used Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) to examine how gender inequality is affected by the education system labor force participation on the growth of the economy. The key findings show that gender inequality in education had a negative effect on economic growth in both short and long run .The coefficient for gender inequality in education was -3.74730 implying that a unit rise in gender inequality in education would reduce economic growth by 3.75 percent. However, in the long run, gender inequality in education would reduce economic growth by 12 percent. On the other hand, gender inequality in labor force participation had no effect on economic growth. Further, other results from the study indicate that inflation had negative effect on economic growth in the short run and investment had positive effect on economic growth in the long run. Openness was found to have no effect on economic growth in both short and long run. The study recommends that the Kenyan government should focus on policies that ensure that the girl child has access to not only primary and secondary education but also institutions of higher learning in order to increase gender equality. Moreover, government should aim at increasing and attracting investment in various sectors of the economy and should stabilize and maintain low inflation rates that are conducive for economic growth.