Population Growth, Hysteresis and Development Outcomes in Sub- Saharan African Economies – A Case of Nigeria

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate if unemployment has been persistence and further examines the effect of population growth on the persistence level of unemployment in Nigeria. Consequent upon these, we trace  the impacts that both portends for development outcomes in Nigeria for the period 1970-2012. The technique of analysis is the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound test for long-run impacts and equilibrium  conditions while we re-parametised the model for short-run impact analyses. We found evidence for hysteretic unemployment in Nigeria and that population growth does not play a role in the persistence of unemployment (hysteresis) in Nigeria. More so, our results show that age structure does not matter for development  outcomes and that Nigeria is not yet undergoing demographic transition. Interestingly, the results further  show that unemployment is a causal factor for population growth. While population growth serves as  demographic gift for development outcomes in the short-run, it impacts negatively, albeit negligibly, on development outcomes in the long-run situation. We, therefore, recommend policies and programmes that will improve on the absorptive capacity, engender entrepreneurial abilities and promote prudent economic resources in Nigeria.

Keywords: Population, Unemployment, Hysteresis, Fertility, Development, ARDL.