Education and Economic Growth Nexus: Does Proxy Matter

This study tests whether education-economic growth nexus is sensitive to proxy used for education. Three broad proxies were identified in the literature, expenditure on education which is an input, school enrolment, which is a flow and education attainment which is a stock. While attainment is the most reliable of the three, expenditures on education is the least reliable. However for African countries, expenditure on education is the most available, while education attainment is hardly available. Using annual data for gross enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, for Nigeria between 1970—2009 as the first proxy for education, and total capital and recurrent expenditures on education for the same period as an alternative proxy. The study finds that education is not associated with economic growth with both proxies in growth empirics.