On May 5, School of Economics Assistant Professor Ruth Uwaifo presented a paper at the highly selective World Bank/ Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Conference in Bonn, Germany.

In her paper, Understanding Low Average Returns to Education in Africa: the Role of Heterogeneity Across Education Levels and the Importance of Political and Economic Reforms, Uwaifo used the case of Nigeria to examine the hypothesis that economic and political reforms can lead to increased returns to schooling - the income benefits derived from an extra year or an extra level of education.

Conventional wisdom has held that the return to education was very high in Africa. However, some recent analysis pointed to low average returns to education in some African countries including Nigeria. Nigeria moved to democracy in 1999 after more than 15 years of military rule. Subsequent significant institutional and economic reforms provided an opportunity to examine the short term impact of reforms on returns to education.

"The results provide evidence that reforms implemented post democracy in Nigeria led to a 2.6% increase in average returns to education. However, the main short-term beneficiaries of this changing return are to those with tertiary education and those who work for the government." Uwaifo's research showed that "the selectivity in beneficiaries is linked with the choice of reforms implemented post democracy. The results suggest that returns to education can be affected by institutions and policy choices and low returns to education in some parts of Africa might be partly due to these factors."