EFFECT OF POPULATION GROWTH ON UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIAN ECONOMY

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the effect of population growth on unemployment in Nigeria using Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds (ARDL) approach on time series data from 1985-2019. It explores the short-run and long-run relationships between population growth and selected macroeconomic variables of economic growth, dependency rate, fertility rate, and unemployment as well as the direction of causality between them. The study showed that population growth does not significantly impact unemployment in the short run; rather, it is the structure of population that does. It was also revealed that population structure has significant negative impact on unemployment in the long run, indicating that rise in population structure tends to reduce unemployment rate in the long run. The study also found that population growth and its components exerts a negative impact on the overall economic conditions in Nigeria. It was recommended that education and training programmers should be reengineered to ensure that more individuals take better advantage of the entrepreneurship training, skills acquisition and financing opportunities in order to boost self-employment. Sectors that are more employment-yielding, such as agriculture and modern services, should be singled out and receive more investments and enabling environment that will create more employment and spur economic growth and development.