Antecedents Of Employment And Economic Growth:Selected Demographic Characteristics,Economic Sectors And Economic Factors In Sub-Saharan Africa

This study investigated antecedents of employment and Economic growth:Selected Demographic characteristics,Economic sectors and economic factors in Sub-Saharan Africa.The study employed secondary data that was sourced from the World Bank and FAOSTAT covering 30 Sub-Saharan African Countries for the period 1990 to 2015.The study employed the traditional neo-classical aggregate production function in its estimation of the regression results.The panel data obtained was analysed using the STATA software program.Hausman test was used and it determined that fixed effects estimation was preferred to random effects estimation and therefore fixed effects regression was used during the analysis.Empirical results on effect of economic growth on employment established that economic growth was statistically and significantly influenced by total employment,women in employment and men in employment while domestic capital,imports,exports and services sectors as well as corruption control statistically and significantly influenced economic growth.On effect of selected demographic characteristics on economic growth,all the variables in the study were found to statistically and significantly influence economic growth.In establishing the relationship between demographic characteristics and employment,demographic characteristics,imports,corruption control and services sectors variables were found to statistically and significantly influence employment.However,domestic capital was found to negatively influence employment though this was not statistically significant,while exports was found negatively and statistically significantly influencing employment.On effect of economic sectors and economic factors on economic growth only foreign direct investment was found to negatively and significantly influence economic growth,all the other variables in the study were found to statistically and significantly influence economic growth.On effect of economic sectors and economic factors on employment,foreign direct investment was found to negatively influence employment though the influence was not statistically significant.The export and agriculture variables negatively and statistically significantly influenced employment.All the other variables in the study were found to positively and statistically significantly influence employment.Empirical results established that the gender gap in employment was maintained in the whole period of the study with more men being employed than women,and that corruption control positively influenced economic growth and employment in SSA.