Education

Abstract

Abstract Education increases people's productivity and creativity, as well as promoting entrepreneurship and advanced technologies. Also, education plays a crucial role in ensuring economic and social progress, thus improve income distribution. Its management nourished the economic debates over the years, triggered by authors such as Schultz, Becker, Mincer, Arrow, Spence, Psacharopoulos, Stiglitz, Acemoglu. Some authors pointed out that investment in education has a positive effect on its profitability, whereas for others, the effect of investment on education is small or even negative. Some others even supported the existence of a Laffer curve on returns to education. Education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa fall under the second group, due to the predominance of the informal sector which has become the only viable option for making a modest living, even for those with secondary, vocational, and tertiary education, in many African countries, including Cameroun. Based on the 2014 Cameroon household survey, in which only 9% of the individuals worked in the formal sector under a contract, positive and significant returns to education, as high as 80% for women, were found. Proper data must be collected to confirm the current findings, hence firmly reject the hypothesis of negative returns to education in a Sub-Saharan African country, as Cameroon.