ECONOMIC GROWTH CENTER
                              
                      YALE UNIVERSITY
                              
                              
                      P.O. Box 208269
             New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8269
                              
                              
                              
                              
              CENTER DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 801
                              
                              
                              
                              
         HEALTH AND SCHOOLING INVESTMENTS IN AFRICA
                              
                              
                              
                              
                              
                              
                      T. Paul Schultz
                      Yale University
                              
                              
                              
                              
                       February 1999
  
       
                                               
  
  
   Note: Center Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussions and critical
         comments.
  
         T. Paul Schultz, Malcolm K. Brachman Professor of Economics and Demography, Economic
         Growth Center, 27 Hillhouse, PO Box 208269, New Haven, CT 06520-8269, USA.  E-mail: 
         paul.schultz@yale.edu.  I appreciate the comments on an earlier version of this paper from Alan
         Krueger and Tim Taylor.
 

                         Abstract
  Regressions across countries from 1960 to 1995 are discussed to document
  African poor performance in terms of infant and child mortality, life
  expectation, and school enrollment rates, controlling for national
  income, women's and men's schooling, and urbanization.  It is concluded
  that intercountry regressions do not yet help us determine the
  consequences of this shortfall in these forms of human capital
  investments on the region's economic growth.  The paper then examines
  microeconomic estimates based on household surveys of the productive
  payoff in Sub-Saharan Africa to nutrition and health, as proxied by adult
  height and weight-for-height, and to education, proxied by years of
  schooling completed, by level.  Biases due to household heterogeneity and
  sample selection are assessed in the cases of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. 
  Political restrictions in South Africa before 1993 are interpreted as
  accounting for the low levels of educational attainment of nonwhites, and
  these quotas offer a supply explanation for the corresponding high rates
  of return to secondary and post-secondary schooling for those nonwhites
  who still managed to obtain such an education.  Studies evidence is then
  considered on the wage returns to variation in the local quality of
  schooling, which appear to benefit disproportionately the above-average
  income households in Africa, as in most other low-income settings.
  Keywords: Africa, Schooling, Health, Returns, Quality