The
Contributions of Health, Education, and Income to Human Development in
Mutasim Ahmed Abdelmawla Mohamed *
The human development index (HDI)
is based on three indicators: longevity, as measured by life expectancy at birth;
educational attainment, as measured by a combination of adult literacy
(two-thirds weight) and the combined first-, second-and third level gross
enrollment ratio (one-third weight); and standard of living, as measured by
real GDP per capita in dollar adjusted according to purchasing power parity
(Human Development Report,1998).
Like many other African countries,
This study
attempts to examine, from an empirical point of view, the contributions of
longevity (health), educational attainment, and decent standard of living to
human development in
The secondary data employed in the
study are collected from official sources namely, Human Development Reports of
the UNDP, besides Ethiopian publications.
E -mail:Abdelmawla2004@hotmail.com
1. INTRODUCTION:
Human development is defined as the development of the people
for the people by the people. Development of the people means investing in
human capabilities, whether in education or health or skills, so that they can
work productively and creatively. Development for the people means ensuring
that the economic growth they generate is distributed widely and fairly while
development by the people means giving everyone a chance to participate. The
most efficient form of participation through the market is access to productive
and remunerative employment. So, the main objective of human development
strategies must be to generate productive employment (Human Development
Report,1993). El Tayeb (2003) argues that human development as a concept is
easier to comprehend than to define or conceptualize. Generally, it is a
process striving at the perpetual enhancement of the material and immaterial
living conditions of the broad population base while sustaining or improving
the environmental quality. It is thus a multi-dimensional process to which
every human endeavor relates in one way or another, to this or that extent.
The human
development index (HDI) is based on three indicators: longevity, as measured by
life expectancy at birth; educational attainment, as measured by a combination
of adult literacy (two-thirds weight) and the combined first-, second-and third
level gross enrollment ratio (one-third weight); and standard of living, as
measured by real GDP per capita in dollar adjusted according to purchasing
power parity (Human Development Report,1998). It is clear from the above
illustration that human development cares for social infrastructure represented
in education and health (longevity).
Like many other African countries,
This study
attempts to examine, from an empirical point of view, the contributions of
longevity (health), educational attainment, and decent standard of living to
human development in
The secondary data employed in the
study are collected from official sources namely, Human Development Reports of
the UNDP, besides Ethiopian publications.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: section (2) reviews the
literature on human development indicators in
2. HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS IN
For several decades, economists attempted at quantifying the vital role of
human capital in determining the pace and structure of modern economic growth
with special attention to education, productive skills, and health (
Historical data from all regions along the second half of the twentieth
century revealed evident improvements in educational and health attainment.
Regardless, it is widely believed that the provision of such services is very
poor in LDCs in general and specially in
Realizing the
positive role that education plays in the development of a society and reducing
poverty, the Ethiopian government has adopted a new Education and Training
Policy (ETP) in 1994. The document outlined the mission and goals of the new
education system of
According to
(MOFED, 2002), the assessment of ESDP1 is as follows: In 2000/01 the pre-school
children enrollment and number of kindergarten increased by 9.6% and 15.6% from
previous year, respectively. However, the coverage of pre-primary education is
still low and hence only 2% of the children between the ages of 4 and 6 were
enrolled in 2000/01. Coverage of primary education as measured by enrollment in
grades 1-8, showed a rapid expansion during the first four years of the
implementation of ESDP I. The enrollment in primary grades increased from
4,468,294 in 1996/97 to 7,401,473 in 2000/2001, (in the fourth year of the
implementation of ESDPI) against a target of 7 million students for the end of
the ESDP I period. This constitutes annual rate of growth of 13.4% in
enrollment during the four-year period under review.
The gender gap has
narrowed in terms of both apparent and net intake rates in the four-year period
under review. The impact of the gender gap in apparent and net intake rates is
visible in the gross enrollment rates in first cycle primary level. The gender
gap of 30.2 percentage points in favor of boys in 1996/1997 in GER for first
cycle primary was brought down to 25.1 percentage points in 2000/2001. However,
the gender gap for the whole primary (1-8) has remained constant at
approximately 20 percentage points through out the four-year period of
implementation of ESDP I. This gap is likely to show a declining trend in the
future, once the impact of the narrowing of gender gap in apparent and net
intakes move to higher grades of the primary schools. On the other hand, the
urban rural disparity in primary enrollment has shown a declining trend. While
the urban primary enrollment grew at an annual compounded rate of 7.7%, the
annual growth in rural enrollment was 16.5%, more than double that of the
growth rate for the urban areas of the country. Both student teacher
and student-section ratios for primary grades (1-8) have increased over the
four years between 1996/97 and 2000/2001.
The student
teacher ratio increased from 42 at the beginning of the five-year period to 60
at the end of the four-year period under review – a 42% increase. During the
same period, the student-section ratio increased from 57.2 to 70.0, overall
increase of 22.4%. This figure shows that the pupil-section ratio is above the
standard set (60), which again indicates shortage of classrooms. Attempts to
reform the curricula in primary grades, in accordance with the goals of the
Education and Training Policy began even before the advent of the ESDP I and
continued during the ESDP implementation period. The emphasis of the curriculum
reform was to design and develop learning materials that shall improve the
problem-solving capacity of the students and to make them more productive
members of the community who respect the human rights and democratic values
The repetition
rate for overall primary (1-8) schools has declined slightly. From a high of
11.9 % in 1996/97, overall repetition in primary grades has been brought down
to 9.1% in 1999/2000. This declining trend in repetition rate is more
pronounced in grade 1. From 16.7% in 1996/97, the repetition rate for grade 1
has declined to 10.6% in 1999/2000- approximately 57% reduction in three years.
Primary 1-8 dropout rate increased from 15.7% in 1996/97 to 17.8% in 1999/2000,
while grade 1 dropout rate decreased from 29.4% to 27.9% for the same period.
However, what is important to note is that the dropout rates remain high
especially for grade 1. One child, in every four, who enters grade 1, leaves
the school before completing the grade
Regarding
secondary education, a total of 55 new secondary schools were built during the
first four years of the implementation of the ESDP I. The total number of senior
secondary schools (9-12) went up from 369 in 1996/1997 to 424 in 2000/01, a 15%
increase in four years or annual compounded rate of 3.5%. Total enrollment in
senior secondary schools (9-12) increased from 426,495 in 1996/97 to 736,174 in
2000/01, a 72% overall increase in four years. This amounts to an annual
compounded rate of 14.6%. This rate of growth is identical for both boys and
girls. The gross enrollment rate (GER) for senior secondary, which stood at
8.4% in1996/1997, increased to 12.9% in 2000/2001, an over all increase of 4.5
percentage points. Gross enrollment rate for girls went up from 7% to 10.9%
during the same period – at a slightly reduced rate than that of the boys. This
has resulted in widening the gender gap between the boys and girls for
The major
bottleneck for secondary education remains availability of qualified teachers.
Out of the total number (14,029), only 5127 or 36.9% of the teachers teaching
in secondary schools in 2000/01 had a qualification equivalent to first degree
or above. In 2000/2001, there were 13 government and 10 non-government
Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Institutions in the
country enrolling a total of 4561 students. Government run TVETs enrolled 2631
students while 1930 students were enrolled in non-government run TVETs. Of the
total number of students enrolled, approximately 17% were females. Besides,
there were 25 skill development centers functioning in the four regions. A
total of 8156 trainees were enrolled in these centers, out of which 2486
(30.4%) were females.
The higher
education sector witnessed rapid expansion during the four years between
1996/1997 and 2000/2001. Four new universities were established through
amalgamating and elevating the status of the regional colleges and institutions.
Five new private higher education institutions were accredited. To meet the
manpower requirements of the economy, new professional training programs were
started in education, engineering, health and business. Through the opening or
expansion of higher education institutions, the enrollment in higher education
institutions increased from 42,132 in 1996/97 to 87,431 in 2000/01, about
107.5% increase. Female enrollment as a percentage of the total has also
increased from 20.2% in 1996/97 to 21.4% in 2000/01.
Currently, 80% of
the human population and 90% of livestock rely on some form of traditional
healthcare systems. The government with the support the World Bank is
implementing Health Sector Development Program aiming to increase primary
health care access from 45 to 55-60%. Therefore, a large segment of the rural
population will still remain without access to modern medicine and will
continue to depend on medicinal plants and traditional healthcare practices.
Medicinal plants are, however coming under threat in the country due to
agricultural expansion, deforestation, overgrazing, drought, fire and over
harvesting. Also the traditional healthcare knowledge is not being disseminated
and is likely to be lost due to lack of preservation and documentation. In view
of the importance of these resources, a project has been formulated to initiate
support for conservation, management and sustainable utilization of medicinal
plants for human and livestock healthcare in
The following
health indicators are compiled from Human Development Report (2005).
Table
(1)
Commitment
to Health: Resources, Access and Services for
|
Indicator |
Percentage
(%) |
|
Public health
expenditure (% of GDP), 2002 |
2.6 |
|
Private
health expenditure (% of GDP), 2002 |
3.1 |
|
Health
expenditure per capita (% of GDP),
2002 |
21 |
|
One- year-
olds fully immunized against tuberculosis (%), 2003 |
76 |
|
One- year-
olds fully immunized against measles (%), 2003 |
52 |
|
Births
attended by skilled health personnel (%), 1995-2003 |
6 |
|
Physicians
(per 100000 people) 1990-2004 |
3 |
|
Contraceptive
prevalence rate (%), 1995-2003 |
8 |
Source: Human Development Report
(2005).
3.
STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY AND DATA:
As pointed out earlier, the ultimate objective of the
present paper is to to examine, from anempirical point of view, the contributions
of longevity (health), educational attainment, and decent standard of living to
human development in Ethiopia over the period (1993-2003). Annual time series
data were compiled from on human development reports for this purpose.
Furthermore, these data are used to estimate the time trend of human
development index. The trend estimate is based on the standard inverse
semilogarithmic (log – lin) trend equation in the natural logarith (for
detailed steps, see Onyenwaku and Ezeh, 1987, Mahran 2000, and Abdelmawla
2005).
In the next
section we report the empirical results and policy implications of the
findings.
4. THE EMPIRICAL RESULTS:
Using the
data on human development indices (available on request from the author), the
average contributions of longevity (health), educational attainment, and decent
standard of living to human development in
Table (2): The Contributions of
Human Development Indicators in
|
Indicator |
Average Share (%) |
|
Health |
35.95 |
|
Educational Attainment |
34.37 |
|
Decent Standard of Living |
29.68 |
|
Total |
100.00 |
HDI in
By applying
(OLS) technique to the data for the variable of our interest, we estimated the
trend equation for the human development index in
Table 3: Estimated Exponential
Function for Human Development in
|
Constant a |
Trend Coefficient b |
R2 |
D.W. |
Growth (%) |
|
|
HDI |
-1.29 |
0.025 (3.07) |
0.57 |
1.58 |
1.03 |
Source: Own Calculations.
From the
estimation results above we observe that HDI in
HDI grows at 1.03%
per annum, which is very low. Thus, allocating more resources to improve social
infrastructure namely health, extension, education, …etc will impact positively
on human development and poverty reducing.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS:
This paper examined the
contributions of longevity (health), educational attainment, and decent
standard of living to human development in
REFERENCES:
Abdelmawla, M. A. (2005): “Gender Gap in Human Development
and its Impact on Economic Growth: The Case of
Human
Development Reports, various issues.
Mahran, H. A. (2000): “Food
Security and Food Productivity in
Onyenwaku, C. E. and Ezeh, N. O.
(1987): “Trends in Production, Area, and Productivity in
Schultz, T.P. (1994) “ Human Capital Investment in Women and
Men: Micro and Macro Evidence of Economic Returns”. Occasional Papers No (44).
Schultz, T.W. (1975): “ The
Ability To Deal With Disequilibria”, Journal of Economic Literature 13: 827-46
Zewdu, M.(2002):"
Sustainable Development in
Ministry of Finance and Economic Development,
“Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program”.