The role of education in poverty alleviation and Economic development: a theoretical perspective and counselling implications

Poverty is a major threat to the existence of humanity in modern times especially in the developing world. The millennium development agenda set to reduce poverty by a half by the year 2015 expresses the global commitment to ensuring the living standards of mankind. Education in every sense is one of the fundamental factors of achieving sustainable economic development through investment in human capital. Education fosters self understanding, improves quality of lives and raises people’s productivity and creativity thus promoting entrepreneurship and technological advances. In addition it plays very crucial roles in securing economic and social progress thus improving income distribution which may consequently salvage the people from poverty. This paper is aimed at contextualizing the role of education in advancing economic development and thereby alleviating poverty. The implication for counselling was also highlighted to overhaul the input, process and output processes of the nation education system to reflect the provision of quality education that may assist in building the humans capita and thereby eradicate the poverty of the deserving citizens.