Human Development and its effects on Economic Growth and Development

Abstract

The focus of this study is to empirically examine the impact of Human Development on Economic Growth and Development in African countries, between 1990 and 2015. The key findings and results of the study suggested the existence of a positive and significant impact of human development on economic growth and development in Africa. The study employed Human Development Index as the main variable of interest; GDP was considered as the dependent variable; inflation, capital, investment and labour were considered as control variables. Random and Fixed effects method of estimation was used with Hausman test estimated to determine the appropriate model to use. The study also revealed that Labour and foreign aid also have a positive and significant relationship with growth as recorded by most researchers. It was recommended that more efforts should be placed on developing the human capacities in all areas

Introduction

Human development was initially characterized as “a procedure of developing individuals’ decisions” that empowers them “to lead a long and sound life, to procure information and to approach assets required for a conventional way of life” (Hopkins 1991). The UNDP list (HDI) speaks of a synthetic measure in which the life expectancy at birth, education, and (the log of) per capital income – as a proxy for different dimensions of human development not specifically related to health and education (Fukuda-Parr (2003)) give a lower type of a country’s accomplishments as far as human development is concerned.Read Full Article