Providing infrastructure when it matters: University proximity at teenage years and educational attainment

This paper investigates the long- and short-term effects of geographical proximity to universities on educational attainment in Nigeria. We relate individuals level of schooling obtained from three rounds of the Nigeria’s Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) to spatial distance to university measured by pairing residential and university campuses geographical coordinates. To identify the long-run effect of the distance to university, we exploit the theory of residential sorting to instrument residential proximity to university. Specifically, we instrument distance to university drawing on variations in households’ proximity to state boundary posts and neighbourhood population density. The instrumental variable estimates show a negative and significant effect of distance revealing that geographical constraints during teenage years represent a barrier to the subsequent human capital acquisition. Additional short-run results from a difference-in-differences estimation indicate that a large scale establishment of universities that suddenly reduced distance to university for some households had beneficial trickle-down effects by increasing enrollment and decreasing the intention to drop out of school, supporting evidence of the role of distance costs in the accumulation of human capital in Nigeria.