HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND LABOUR MARKET OUTCOMES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS CONTROLLING FOR POPULATION GROWTH AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN NIGERIA

Povzetek

Understanding the dynamics of the relationships between health, education and labour market outcomes in Nigeria reveals how persistent human capital deficits hinder productivity, restrict employment opportunities, increase socio-economic vulnerability and end up hindering the country's wider trajectory of sustainable economic development. This study adopted the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique with annual data (1990-2023) to examines the impact of improvement in the quality of education, access to health care and industrial development on labour productivity and employment outcomes in the face of the population dynamics in Nigeria. The results indicate that human capital investments have stronger labour market impacts when complemented by a diversified and labour absorbing industrial sector. Making the curriculum more relevant, teacher capacity building, widening of primary healthcare systems, universal health coverage, improving working efficiency, targeted industries policies were needed to convert these into jobs. Persistent skills deficits, imbalanced health access and poor manufacturing growth continue to be major constraints. The study cites integrated reforms in the areas of education, health and industry as needed for inclusive and sustainable development.