This paper discusses the distributive nature of education policies in developing countries, with a specific emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. We show that human capital is particularly unequally distributed in sub-Saharan African countries and in Middle-East and North Africa and South Asian regions as well, after taking into account the inevitable (arithmetical) correlation which exists between the aggregate level of human capital and its concentration. We provide further evidence, based on sub-Saharan Africa schooling structure data that these countries pay, relatively speaking, little attention to primary education, to the benefit of secondary education. We interpret this bias as the result of specific institutional characteristics of sub-Saharan Africa, which are deeply-rooted in its history (in particular its post-colonial legacy), its demography and its geography.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: