PUBLIC EDUCATION EXPENDITURE AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejsss.v12i1.2125Gako-hitzak:
public expenditure, education, unemployment rate, UNESCO and ARDLLaburpena
This study carefully examined the influence of public education expenditure on unemployment in Nigeria from 1980 to 2023. To achieve the above objective, data on unemployment rate, both capital and recurrent government spending on education, as well as inflation rate, were collected from the statistical bulletin of Nigeria's central bank. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag -ARDL method was used for analysis. The ARDL Bounds test showed there is a long-term connection between the above variables. The findings showed that in both the long and short term, government capital spending on education had a positive but not significant effect on unemployment in Nigeria. However, government recurrent spending on education had a negative and significant effect on unemployment. The inflation rate had a negative effect on unemployment in the long run and a positive effect in the short run. The study found that only the recurrent part of government spending on education has helped to reduce unemployment in Nigeria during the study period. Therefore, the government should ensure enough funding for the education sector and quickly implement fiscal responsibility laws to improve accountability and careful use of funds in the education sector. This will improve the quality of teaching, curriculum content, and learning facilities, which in turn will make students more competitive in the labour market, increase workers’ productivity by equipping them with cognitive and technical skills required in modern economies, ensures graduates possess relevant capabilities demanded by employers, promotes innovation, creativity, and business creation capacities and helps produce job-ready graduates aligned with labour market needs.
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