Effect of public education financing on educational quality in sub-Saharan africa: an autoregressive distributed lag approach

Abstract

Education plays an essential role in improving the welfare of society. Governments, therefore, invest huge sums of money in education. However, there is a lack of conclusive evidence regarding the impact of public education funding on educational outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, this study analyses the short-run and long-run effects of public education financing on the quality of education in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper applies the autoregressive distributed lag model on annual time series data from the World Bank from 1970 to 2021. The results show that public education financing significantly affects the pupil-teacher ratio in the short run at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. In the long run, however, public education financing significantly affects the pupil-teacher ratio only at the secondary and tertiary levels. The study’s findings imply that increased public education spending effectively improves education quality in sub-Saharan Africa in the short and long run. Therefore, sub-Saharan Africa must make sufficient budgetary allocations to education to enhance educational quality in the sub-region.

Keywords:

• Public education financing
• educational outcomes
• educational quality
• sub-Saharan Africa
• ARDL

Reviewing Editor:

• Arif H Kabir, Institute of Education and Research, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Subjects:

• Development Studies
• Development Policy
• Economics and Development
• Education Policy & Politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abubakar Musah

Abubakar Musah is a Lecturer at the Banking and Finance Department of the University of professional studies, Accra. He holds B. A. in Economics and MPhil in Finance degrees from the University of Ghana, Accra. Musah is a PhD in Finance candidate at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. His research undertakings are concentrated within the domains of development economics and finance, with a distinct focus on education financing.

Godfred Aawaar

Godfred Aawaar is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Accounting and Finance of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and technology, Kumasi. He holds PhD in Finance from Zululand in South Africa. His research interest revolves around stock market development, development finance, behavioural finance, education finance, and international financial markets.

Godwin Musah

Godwin Musah is a Lecturer at the Department of Banking and Finance, University of Professional Studies, Accra. He holds a PhD in Finance, MPhil in Finance, MBA in finance, and a BSc in Mathematics all from KNUST. His research interest is in SME financing, behavioural finance, political finance, time series analysis and all aspects of banking.