Abstract:
In demography and population economics discourse, the macroeconomic implications of an upsurge in working
age population, notably the labour force, on economic growth has been widely studied and the inherent
beneficial impact has become known as demographic dividend. However, the exact mechanism linking the
dividend to growth remains a perennial question. This motivates the current study to investigate empirically the
dividend-growth nexus in the context of Nigerian economy in a multivariate VAR model spanning between the
period 1970 and 2017. Specifically, the paper attempted to answer the question: Is the Nigerian Demographic
Dividend an Education-triggered Dividend? Innovation Accounting Techniques was applied to assess the
dynamic interactions among the variables. The empirical evidence obtained revealed that the innovation in gross
enrollment made many contributions to the variation in economic growth relative to innovation in economic
support ratio. The magnitude ranges between 20.09 and 27.54 percent. This result, thus, lend credence to the
theoretical view of the education-triggered dividend model which ascribes to education twofold roles of helping
to lessen fertility and also enhancing productivity but invalidates the conventional dividend paradigm.
