Economics & Religious Implications On Adult Literacy In Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Although literacy rates have improved somehow in recent years, there are still large numbers of people that are illiterates in developing countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This paper examines the impact of public education expenditures, the percentage of urban population and religious affiliation on adult literacy rate in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, a cross-sectional data of 34 Sub-Saharan African countries with adequate data information were analyzed. The results from the ANOVA and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression analysis are quite conclusive - that urban population, government expenditures on education and religious affiliations do have strong statistical impact on literacy.</span></span></p>

The Impact of Religion on Gender Gap in Adult Literacy in Developing Countries

“…URBAN is statistically significant, meaning that for one unit increase of urban population, the gender gap in literacy will decrease by 0.0028 unit. It is also the same as we expected, Okpala and Okpala (2009) proved that urban population have a significant positive impact on literacy, because urbanization promotes human capital, we expect that the higher the urban population percentage, the lower the gender gap in literacy. As for religion variables, since we exclude CATHOLIC, we only consider LOGPROTESTANT and ISLAM.…”

“…Chaudhary and Rubin (2011) used data in India to show that literacy is negatively related to the proportion of Islam adherents in the district. Okpala and Okpala (2009) examined the data of 34 Sub-Saharan countries, they showed that countries with larger Islam believers have lower adult and female literacy rates, compared to countries with larger Christianity believers, the reason is that the early church missionary movement promoted the establishment of schools, countries that benefited from the early Christian mission schools experienced higher literacy rate than other countries. Furthermore, many kinds of literature focused on religion and female education.…”

“…There are also other factors contribute to the gender gap in literacy other than religion. Mazumdar (2005) stressed that government expenditure on education is a country's commitment to education, in this way government expenditure on education decrease the gender gap in literacy; Okpala and Okpala (2009) proved that urbanization promotes human capital, investing in human capital would have greater returns in urban areas, so higher urbanization level increase the literacy rate; Norton and Tomal (2009) discuss the effect of participation of women in labor force on female education, and found that female labor participation depress female higher education, because the substitution effect of labor for education; Verner (2005) used data from 180 countries coming from the World Bank to analyze the determinants of literacy. He presented a regression model to analyze the factors behind literacy and found out that formal education significantly affects literacy rates, both the increase in school enrollment rates and average years of schooling of adults are related to the increase of literacy rate; higher life expectancy result in higher literacy rates, as health is the guarantee of people to read and write.…”

“…Public expenditure on education (GOV) is measured by the percentage of GDP per capita, it shows a country's commitment to education (Mazumdar, 2005), which promotes the growth of literacy, so we assume that the more of the government expenditure, the smaller gender gap; URBAN measures the percentage of the population that live in urban areas, Okpala and Okpala (2009) proved that urban population have a significant positive impact on literacy, because urbanization promotes human capital, we expect that the higher the urban population percentage, the lower the gender gap in literacy. Data used in the estimation model is summarized in Appendix 1.…”

The Political Ethnicity of the Dutch Colonialism towards the Islamic Sultanates in Indonesia: The Socio-Historical Perspectives

“…University education across the world is known for freedom which includes speech, association, movement, thought, conscience and religion, among others Okpala and Okpala (2017) but the negative implications of such freedom on youth in a developing country like Nigeria is often ignored in-spite of several studies conducted on the relationship of such freedom with social problems such as cultism, Ajayi et al (2010), violent demonstrations Babalola (2016), sexual assault Eze (2013), armed robbery Smith, (2001) cited in Omonijo et al (2017), prostitution and examination misconduct Petters and Okon (2016) and unstable academic calendar. The problem of violent demonstration, most especially, has resulted in the death of several students in many tertiary institutions Peter and Ebimobowei (2015).…”