Dynamics of Growth, Poverty and Human Capital: Evidence from Indonesian Sub-National Data.

The aim of this study is twofold. First, despite the vast empirical literature on testing the neoclassical model of economic growth using cross-country data, very few studies exist at the sub-national level. We attempt to fill this gap by utilizing panel data over the 2002-2012 period, a modified neoclassical growth equation, and a dynamic panel estimator to investigate the effect of both health and education capital on economic growth and poverty at the district level in Indonesia. Secondly, whilst most existing cross-country studies tend to concentrate only on education as a measure of human capital, we expand the analysis and probe the effects of health capital as well. As far as we are aware, no study has done a direct and comprehensive examination of the impacts of health on growth and poverty at the sub-national level. Thus this study is a premier at the sub-national level, and our findings will be particularly relevant in understanding the role of both health and education capital in accelerating growth and poverty reduction efforts