Title: Do education and health influence economic growth and food security? Evidence from Bangladesh

Authors: Md. Saiful Islam

Addresses: Department of Economics and Finance, College of Business Administration, University of Hail, Hail, P.O. Box 55476, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract: This study aims to explore the impact of education and health on economic growth and food security (FS) in Bangladesh. It employs economic growth rate, expenditure on education as a proxy for education, expenditure on health as a proxy for health, and fertility rate, infant mortality rate and prevalence of undernourishment as proxies for FS. Descriptive statistics are used to measure the FS indices. Engle-Granger cointegration is applied to determine the long run and short run relationships among variables, using World Bank data for the period 1998-2017. Cointegration results confirm the existence of short run as well as long run positive relationships between education spending and economic growth. The findings suggest that education has a direct link with FS, which has various dimensions, including access to food; if the population are educated; they are empowered and able to access food both by market and non-market mechanisms.

Keywords: education expenditure; health expenditure; economic growth; adult literacy rate; fertility rate; infant mortality rate; prevalence of undernourishment; food security; causality; Bangladesh.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHD.2020.108754

International Journal of Happiness and Development, 2020 Vol.6 No.1, pp.59 - 75

Received: 28 Oct 2019
Accepted: 23 Jan 2020
Published online: 31 Jul 2020 *

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