The Impact of Government Education Expenditures on the Human Development Index in ‎Iran: Autoregressive Distributed Lag

In recent years, the inclusion of human development in the country's development plans shows the importance of the human development index for policy-making and planning. One of the important factors that can play a great role in improving the human development index is education. In this regard, The present study tries to investigate the effect of educational expenditures in higher, secondary and primary as independent variables on the Human Development Index as a dependent variable in Iran during the period 2001 to 2018.To estimate the effect, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) has been used. Before estimating the model, the significance test of the variables was performed. The results of the static test based on the generalized Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Prone tests showed that the Human Development Index and higher education expenditures remained at the data level, but the variables of secondary and primary education expenditures remained in the first difference of the data. The variables of this study were accumulated from I (0) and I (1), ARDL method was used. Findings show that higher and secondary education expenditures have a positive and significant effect on human development index, but although primary education expenditures have a positive relationship with human development index in the short term, it is not significant and in the long run its effect on human development indexes It is negative. The error correction coefficient is 0.30 and is statistically significant at the 99% confidence level. This indicates that the adjustment of deviations from the long-run equilibrium relationship takes more than three years. Given that higher education expenditures have the greatest impact on the human development index, it is suggested that officials pay more attention to investing in higher education to accelerate economic growth and human development. Also, considering that the expenses of secondary education have a positive and significant effect on the human development index, it is suggested that if the graduates do not continue their education, the officials should provide them with employment by holding the necessary training courses related to their favorite profession. By employing them, national production and income, and as a result, the human development index, will be improved.