On human capital and economic development: some results for Africa

The very complex story of economic growth and development teaches us that skilled human resources are needful to increase their promotion and attainment. In fact, more educated people are more likely to enjoy good health, and so healthy people enjoy the learning process more than sick people. This strong bidirectional relationship generates a virtuous circle leading to greater development. The aim of the present paper is to capture, using some indicators, the interactions among education, health and economic development in some Sub-Saharan African countries. In particular, we apply a multidimensional scaling method to define relations between countries in terms of proximity/distance with respect to the considered indicators. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.