With UN member states formally adopting the Education 2030 Agenda through the Incheon Declaration,
comes the need to evaluate the effect of education on the joint outcomes of employment and consumption
for each member state, so as to get a clear picture of its value as an effective policy leverage for sustainable
development in the country. To this end, this paper looks at the effects of educational attainment on the
two key aspects of consumer behavior (labor force participation, and consumption spending) in Burkina
Faso, using a Semi-parametric Bivariate modeling approach, and data from the National Survey on
Household Living Conditions.
The results show that not only is the semi-parametric modeling approach methodologically innovative
because it deals with the simultaneity of labor force participation and consumption spending using
conventional systems of two equations, with non-linear covariates’ effects using spline approach, and nonnormal
bivariate distribution using copula functions; it also performs better than the classic Heckman
two-step estimator based on the AIC and BIC criterion. Most importantly, it is found that a typical
head of houshold’s education level plays a positive and significant role in his/her likely participation in
the labor market, and also Simultaneously contributes to higher household’s per-capita food consumption
and non-food consumption spending in burkina faso. Moreover, the positive and significant correlation
coefficients between labor force participation and consumption spending on food and non-food items,
suggest that the assumption of joint occurrence of the two processes is important. This assumption leads
to a more accurate account of the effects of education and that of the other covariates in the system.
Overall, the results do support the importance of education as an effective policy leverage for fighting
against food insecurity and poverty in burkina faso, although care must be taken to reduce the disparities
between rural and urban areas.