Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Dependency Ratio and the Economic Growth Puzzle in Sub-Saharan Africa

Contents:

Author Info

  • Bichaka Fayissa
  • Paulos Gutema

Abstract

Conventional growth theories in the literature explain the poor economic performance of African economies by stressing the inadequacy of savings, human capital, and poor institutional quality. However, the key question is how to enhance savings for the accumulation of both physical and human capital in order to spur growth. A common thread that runs through the existing models is that the dependency ratio, not only remains constant over time, but has no long-run negative impact on economic growth. By relaxing this rigid assumption, this paper constructs a growth estimating equation which accommodates this demographic factor. The analytic results from the modified model suggest that economies with high dependency ratio face their stable equilibrium at lower levels of their income per capita. Moreover, econometric results from analysis of panel data drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa economies suggest that the growth puzzle can be well explained in terms of the demographic factors, especially the level and dynamics of dependency ratio of the region.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://capone.mtsu.edu/berc/working/DependencY_%20Ratio_WP_6_1_2010_.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance in its series Working Papers with number 201010.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Jun 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201010

Contact details of provider:
Email:
Web page: http://www.mtsu.edu/~berc/working/Economics_Working_Papers.html
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa; growth model; dependency ratio; steady state; panel data; fixed-effects model; random-effects model;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:201010

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (E. Anthon Eff).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.