AEC 2010 - Education and Economic Development in Africa

This paper uses panel data from two new data sets on educational attainment to investigate the effects of education on several development outcomes in African countries. I find that education has a positive and significant impact on these development outcomes. I also find that different levels of education affects development outcomes differently; for some development outcomes, primary and secondary education may be more important than tertiary education while for some development outcomes, such as income growth rate, tertiary education may be more important. The results of this paper have implications for development policy in African countries.