Prevailing Poverty in SAARC Countries: Can Education Help?

• Main Authors: Bukhari, Samra, Kalim, Rukhsana, Arshed, Noman, Hassan, Muhammad Shahid
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: education enrollment; social exclusion; Kuznets curve; panel FMOLS
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/apssr/vol21/iss1/13; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/apssr/article/1357/viewcontent/RA_2012.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

South Asia is a highly populated and poverty-ridden region of the world that barely spends 0.9% of its GDP on education. This present study is structured to capture the variable returns in various types of education on poverty for the selected SAARC economies for the period ranges from 1983 to 2016. This study applies the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) approach to obtain empirical results of the Kuznets curve of education poverty. The empirical results reveal that the primary enrollment increases poverty and does not follow a Kuznets curve. In contrast, an initial increase in secondary enrollment increases poverty but later leads to a decrease in poverty. Finally, an initial increase in tertiary enrollment decreases poverty but later leads to an increase in poverty. Based on these findings, this study proposes that education policy should be formulated separately for each level of education to extract maximum gains for the workforce.