Private Wage Returns to Schooling in Nigeria: 1996-1999

In the last two decades, primary and secondary school enrollment rates have declined in Nigeria while enrollment rates in post-secondary school have increased. This paper estimates from the General Household Survey for Nigeria the private returns to schooling associated with levels of educational attainment for wage and self-employed workers. The estimates for both men and women are small at primary and secondary levels, 2 to 4 percent, but are substantial at post-secondary education level, 10-15 percent. These schooling return estimates may account for the recent trends in enrollments. Thus, increasing public investment to encourage increased attendance in basic education is not justifiable on grounds of private efficiency, unless investments to increase school quality have higher private returns. With high private returns to post-secondary schooling, students at this level should pay tuition, to recoup more of the public costs of schooling, which may be redistributed to poor families through scholarships.Schooling Investment; Private Wage Returns; Efficiency; Equity; Nigeria

A qualitative exploration of the experience and personal and professional impact of psychodynamic and integrative counselling training on adoptee counsellors

Background Adoption research has tended to focus on associated emotional and developmental challenges. There is little research on how adoptees experience counselling training and its personal and professional impact on adoptees. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the counselling training experiences of four counsellors who were adopted as babies (under 1 year of age). Methods One-to-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with two psychodynamically trained counsellors and two integratively trained counsellors. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the training experiences of adoptees, and the personal and professional impact of training. Findings Four group experiential themes were identified: disclosure; place in world; relationships; and reflexivity. Implications for Practice The findings contribute to the growing body of research on counsellor training and provide insights into adoptees' experiences of counselling training. These insights enable improvements in the provision of such training by counselling training providers to adoptees, and in the provision of the specialist training either required or recommended to provide adoption support. The research also furthers the understanding of adoptees' experiences more generally and may also help noncounsellor adoptees deal with issues perceived as related to their adoption as well as others who face similar issues, due to their own lived experiences. Conclusion Both modalities of counselling training helped participants deal with difficulties presented by their adoptions, in particular regarding identity and relationships, affording opportunities for growth and healing

Intra-Household Redistribution of Income and Calorie Consumption in South-Western Nigeria

This study investigates how per capita calorie intake in low income households of rural southwestern Nigeria responds to changes in total household income and women's share of household income. The study addresses two major questions. First, is calorie-income elasticity large enough to justify the use of income increases as a food/nutrition policy strategy for increasing calorie intake among low income households? Second, what is the potential effect of intra-household redistribution of income from men to women on per capita calorie consumption? My results show that calorie-income elasticity is small and close to zero, implying that income policies may not be the most effective way to achieve substantial improvements in calorie consumption. I also find that increases in women's share of household income are likely to result in marginal declines in per capita food calorie intake, suggesting that income redistribution from men to women would not increase per capita food energy intake in these households

Private Wage Returns to Schooling in Nigeria: 1996-1999

In the last two decades, primary and secondary school enrollment rates have declined in Nigeria while enrollment rates in post-secondary school have increased. This paper estimates from the General Household Survey for Nigeria the private returns to schooling associated with levels of educational attainment for wage and self-employed workers. The estimates for both men and women are small at primary and secondary levels, 2 to 4 percent, but are substantial at post-secondary education level, 10-15 percent. These schooling return estimates may account for the recent trends in enrollments. Thus, increasing public investment to encourage increased attendance in basic education is not justifiable on grounds of private efficiency, unless investments to increase school quality have higher private returns. With high private returns to post-secondary schooling, students at this level should pay tuition, to recoup more of the public costs of schooling, which may be redistributed to poor families through scholarships

Female Schooling, Non-Market Productivity, and Labor Market Participation in Nigeria

Economists have argued that increasing female schooling positively influences the labor supply of married women by inducing a faster rise in market productivity relative to non-market productivity. I use the Nigerian Labor Force Survey to investigate how own and husband's schooling affect women's labor market participation. I find that additional years of postsecondary education increases wage market participation probability by as much as 15.2%. A marginal increase in primary schooling has no effect on probability of wage employment, but could enhance participation rates in self-employment by about 5.40%. These effects are likely to be stronger when a woman is married to a more educated spouse. The results suggest that primary education is more productive in non-wage work relative to wage work, while postsecondary education is more productive in wage work. Finally, I find evidence suggesting that non-market work may not be a normal good for married women in Nigeria

Challenges of Middle School to High School Transition: A Phenomenological Study of the Experiences of Students Transitioning From Eighth Grade to Ninth Grade

Transitioning from middle to high school comes with a lot of hiccups and challenges for adolescents as they are having to deal with this huge change during a season of life that is challenging. During adolescence, teenagers experience various mental, psychological, and physiological changes. This dynamic developmental period comes with intense changes, and having a better understanding can help teachers, school staff, parents, and peers work through these challenges with teenagers. This study explored the experiences of students when they transitioned from Grade 8 to Grade 9, examined the available support systems during this transition, and how students utilized the available support services. In the study, the researcher utilized an interpretative phenomenological analysis and a semistructured interview protocol via Zoom to understand the lived experiences of students transitioning from middle school to high school. The sample size included five student participants, five parent participants, and two school counselors. All the five student participants are current 10th-grade students who transitioned from feeder middle schools within the same school district. Interviews took place online using Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found that some significant socioemotional issues occurred during this transition period. Results from the study indicated that students felt overwhelmed during the first few weeks of transitioning to ninth grade but quickly overcame these challenges as they utilized available support provided by school staff. Findings from the study imply that parents and school administrators played a role in ensuring that the transition was smooth and manageable

Female Schooling, Non-Market Productivity, and Labor Market Participation in Nigeria

Economists have argued that increasing female schooling positively influences the labor supply of married women by inducing a faster rise in market productivity relative to non-market productivity. I use the Nigerian Labor Force Survey to investigate how own and husband's schooling affect women's labor market participation. I find that additional years of postsecondary education increases wage market participation probability by as much as 15.2%. A marginal increase in primary schooling has no effect on probability of wage employment, but could enhance participation rates in self-employment by about 5.40%. These effects are likely to be stronger when a woman is married to a more educated spouse. The results suggest that primary education is more productive in non-wage work relative to wage work, while postsecondary education is more productive in wage work. Finally, I find evidence suggesting that non-market work may not be a normal good for married women in Nigeria.Nigeria, Female Schooling, Women's Labor Market Participation, Non-Market Productivity

Intra-Household Redistribution of Income and Calorie Consumption in South-Western Nigeria

This study investigates how per capita calorie intake in low income households of rural southwestern Nigeria responds to changes in total household income and women's share of household income. The study addresses two major questions. First, is calorie-income elasticity large enough to justify the use of income increases as a food/nutrition policy strategy for increasing calorie intake among low income households? Second, what is the potential effect of intra-household redistribution of income from men to women on per capita calorie consumption? My results show that calorie-income elasticity is small and close to zero, implying that income policies may not be the most effective way to achieve substantial improvements in calorie consumption. I also find that increases in women's share of household income are likely to result in marginal declines in per capita food calorie intake, suggesting that income redistribution from men to women would not increase per capita food energy intake in these households.Nigeria, Intra-Household Redistribution of Income, Women's Income Share Elasticity, Income Elasticity, Calorie Consumption.

Machine Learning Priority Rule (MLPR) For Solving Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problems

This paper introduces a machine learning priority rule for solving non-preemptive resource-constrained project scheduling problems (RCPSP). The objective is to find a schedule of the project’s tasks that minimizes the total completion time of the project satisfying the precedence and resource constraints. Priority rule based scheduling technique is a scheduling method for constructing feasible schedules of the jobs of projects. This approach is made up of two parts: a priority rule to determine the activity list and a schedule generation scheme which constructs the feasible schedule of the constructed activity list. Different scheduling methods use one of these schemes to construct schedules to obtain the overall project completion time. Quite a number of priority rules are available; selecting the best one for a particular input problem is extremely difficult. We present a machine learning priority rule which assembles a set of priority rules, and uses machine learning strategies to choose the one with the best performance at every point in time to construct an activity list of a project. The one with better performance is used most frequently. This removes the problem of manually searching for the best priority rule amongst the dozens of rules that are available. We used our approach to solve a fictitious project with 11 activities from Pm Knowledge Center. Four priority rules were combined. We used serial schedule generation scheme to generate our schedules. Our result showed that the total completion time of the project obtained with our approach competes favorably with the completion times gotten with the component priority rules. We then went further and compared our algorithm with 9 other available priority rules. Our results showed that the completion time got using our algorithm compete favorably with the total 13 priority rules available in the literature