Health and Schooling Investments in Africa.

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.