The relationship between human development and the gross domestic products GDP : case study Syria

Abstract EN

This paper tests the relationship between economic growth and human development using annual data from Syria for the period 1970-2000.

This period is chosen for two reasons; firstly because of its political and economic homogeneity which is conductive to arrive at accurate results and secondly because the significant changes in the Syrian government's policies in the fields of education and health like the opining for the first time of private universities and open learning programs and the involvement of the private sector in providing health services and health insurance.

The results of the cointegration tests confirm the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between economic growth and the two human development variables.

The long-run coefficients are statistically significant for the health variables but not for the education one.

The latter result is investigated and is found to be caused by the use of a poor proxy for education and/or certain characteristics of the government education policy.

The analysis of this policy highlighted some possible explanations of the above results.

These explanations can be summarised as the imbalance between the supply and demand for education, absence of real improvement in the quality of education, inefficient cost-benefit analysis from students when deciding whether or not to pursue their study.