The Role of Education as a Source of Human Capital on Rural Poverty: A Review of Literature

Abstract

Rural area is a geographic area located outside cities and towns. In order to have long term sustainability in rural sector, education as a source of human capital formation plays a major role by empowering the rural people to a right direction in a productive manner for right decision making ability. Hence the education would be a sustainable strategy to uplift the rural sector with agricultural development. Although for last few decades, many subsidiary programs were introduced in order to alleviate rural poverty, still rural sector has poverty. However, there is a structural change in the rural sector due to either subsidies or free education system. Hence, the objective of this review is to explore how educations as a source of human capital would impact on to expand the living standards of the rural sector as identified by literature. For over past two-three decades, large number of studies has been documented in relation to this theme. In the present study substantial amount of published articles were referred in order to grasp the real gravity of the agricultural development in the light of education as a desk research. The objectives guiding the analysis of literature are to; understand the relationship between education and human capital development; human capital and human development; human capital and rural agricultural productivity; and human capital as a source of human capital to alleviate rural poverty. This review is instigated by searching key academic databases using relevant search questions. The literature suggests that there is an inverse relationship between human capital and rural poverty