Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equality of opportunities.
For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a 10% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling. For societies, it drives long-term economic growth, spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.
Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom, and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed, as the 2018 World Development Report (WDR) stressed.
Making smart and effective investments in people’s education is critical for developing the human capital that will end extreme poverty. At the core of this strategy is the need to tackle the learning crisis, put an end to Learning Poverty, and help youth acquire the skills they need to succeed in today’s world.
Other poverty is more transient and reflects asset of vulnerabilities for income,
assets and entitlements. In this context, poverty means the absence of security and so affect a very wide spectrum of Nigerian families.
They may have adequate income for some time but may highly vulnerable to changes, hazards and misfortune.
Failure to maintain social integration and build hope for poverty reduction leads to violence against property and persons.
This in turn impact negatively on the economy and welfare of both poor and non-poor.
Education provides a foundation for eradicating poverty and fostering the economic development. It is the groundwork on which much of economic and social well-being of the citizens are built. Education is the key to increasing economic efficiency and social consistency, by increasing the value and efficiency of the labor force, and consequently raises the poor from poverty.
Education increases the overall productivity and intellectual flexibility of the labor force, and ensures that a country is competitive in a world market now characterized by changing technologies and production methods.
According to Roberts (2011), the primary determinants of a country’s standard of living is how well it succeeds in developing and utilizing the skills and knowledge, furthering the health and educating the majority of its population.
No country has achieved constant economic development without considerable investment in education and human capital many researchers have shown handsome returns to various forms of human capital accumulation basic education, research, training and aptitude building (Denison, 2008, Bowman 2010). Unequal education tends to have a negative impact on per capita income and thereby increase poverty in many countries.
Educating girls and women is probably the single most effective investment a developing country like Nigeria can make, whether women work outside the home. It creates a multitude of positive remunerations for families including better family health and nutrition, improved birth spacing lower infant and child mortality, and enhanced educational attainment of children. In order for a country to be adequately integrated in the world's market for manufactured goods, and compete in these markets and in globalizing service markets, will depend on the excellence of human capital they bring to the competition. Ensuring that all citizens re-educated and numerate, that many possess a wide range of problems solving skills beyond the basic level, and that some have world-class professional skill will be an advantage.
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