The effects of educational attainment on poverty reduction in Cameroon

Abstract

In recent years education has been promulgated as a primary weapon against poverty. Hence it is important to investigate the impact of different levels of education upon poverty. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of different levels of education of the employed individuals as determinants of poverty in Cameroon. The data for this study come from the 2001 Cameroonian Household Survey obtainable from the National Institute of Statistics. A sample-selectivity corrected logistic regression model is estimated based on the cross-sectional data, with the probability of an individual being poor as the dependent variable and a set of educational levels and experience as explanatory variables. The results depict that improvement in experience and educational attainments reduce the probability of being poor of the employed individual. On the gender side the study concludes that a male’s educational level is more poverty reducing than a female counterpart.   Key words: Education, poverty reduction, gender, Cameroon.