Key messages
• Improving the income of workers requires developing their human capital in its dimensions, education, health, nutrition and skills.
• Increasing the supply of human capital development services is not enough not to guarantee improved incomes.
• Improve the income requires to combine at the same time, extension of the offers and increased returns to education and training, health and nutrition.
• Regularly evaluate policies helps guide policies effectively development of human capital for increased income.
The problem of the inconstancy of the relationship between human capital and increased prosperity
The development of human capital is recognized as an important factor in increasing the prosperity of individuals and States. Increasing levels of education, training, improving health and nutrition raises people’s incomes.
Also, since the beginning of the 1980s, the Burkinabè authorities have given great importance to the development of human capital in the conduct of public action. To cite only these key figures, public spending on education, which represented only 1.4% of GDP in 1996, was increased to 6% of GDP in 2018. As for public spending on health, it more than doubled , rising from 1.1% of GDP in 2003 to 2.4% in 2018. In this regard, education and health outcomes have subsequently improved. In secondary school, the gross enrollment rate increased from 6.9% in 1990 to 40.7% in 2020. Life expectancy at birth has also improved, from 49.4 years in 1990 to 61.2 years in 2019.
However, despite this progress in education and health, poverty increased between 1994 and 2009, affecting 44.5% of the population, then 46.7% before declining from 2014, to concern only 36, 2% of the population in 2018.
These data reveal the fact that an increase in human capital endowments does not necessarily lead to an improvement in household prosperity. Hence the need to reconcile human capital development strategies with their ultimate goal: improving household prosperity. This requires a commitment to correct their shortcomings, by improving their economic and social impact.
For what do you have to reconcile the development policies of the human capital with the prosperity of Burkinabè people?
Increasing the impact of human capital accumulation on household prosperity would enable Burkina Faso to achieve the targets 1 and 2 of SDG 1, namely to eradicate extreme poverty and reduce at least by halfpoverty.
It would also facilitate the realization of the main targets of SDG 8, namely, growth, economic productivity, development of small and medium-sized enterprises and increased efficiency in the use of productive and consuming resources.
What policy options should be favoured?
The study showed that in the event of a drop in the returns to human capital endowments in its dimensions, education, health, nutrition and decent employment, the expected improvement in income may not be observed. This is why it recommends that the political authorities no longer focus their human capital development policy on increasing the supply of services, but rather combine the extension of the supply and improved yields services.
In order to unleash the full effects of human capital accumulation on workers’ prosperity, the authorities should undertake the following reforms.
For education and trainingadapt the curricula taught, increase the supply of technical and vocational education and training.
In favor of the promotion of decent employmentcontinue to improve labor market policies, facilitate access to internships and short-term training for young people and deflated workers and support youth entrepreneurship.
Finally, regarding the nutrition policyreset it to cover the power supply at work.
Par: Porto BASIS and Alain SIRI
