Gender Equality and Human Development

This study examined the effect of gender equality in education and employment on human development in Nigeria between 1990 and 2021. The specific objectives are to determine the effect of the gender parity index in primary school enrolment, gender parity index in secondary school enrolment and female labour force participation on the human development index (HDI), a proxy for economic development. The study employed annual time series data for each of the variables over the study period. The data analysis followed the descriptive statistics, pre-estimation tests (unit root and bounds cointegration tests) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model in addition to the post-estimation tests. The findings from the unit root test showed that the variables are mixed integrated while the bounds cointegration test results affirmed the evidence of long-run relationship among the variables at the 5 per cent significance level. The findings from the estimated ARDL showed that the ratio of female-to-male primary school enrolment has a significant positive effect on HDI. A unit increase in the ratio of female-to-male primary school enrolment is associated with a 0.1718 increase in the HDI score. This suggests that the gender parity index in primary school enrolment has the potential to promote human development in Nigeria in the long run. At the same time, evidence of a positive effect of the ratio of female-tomale secondary school enrolment on the HDI was established from the long-run results. Although this finding conforms to the a priori expectation, it is not statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. The long-run results further showed that female labour force participation has a positive and significant effect on HDI. This suggests that a 1 per cent increase in female labour force participation leads to a 0.011 decrease in the HDI. The error correction coefficient revealed that the model can adjust from the short to the long run at a speed of 65.45 per cent. Based on the findings, this study recommends that policymakers should provide more opportunities for equal access to primary education in accordance with the objectives of universal basic education (UBE) to increase its contributions to HDI.