Impact of Education on Poverty Alleviation in Afghanistan: An Empirical Evaluation Abstract The brightness begins when the sun of knowledge and public awareness rises, and; wherever the light of knowledge becomes silent, the darkness of ignorance dominates human life which in turn leads to grave issues like poverty. Poverty is a big challenge in the present century. It’s like a tree having many roots, one of which among the many causes is education. Not every individual without education is living in extreme poverty, but most of the extremely poor lack basic education. Education is often referred to as the great equalizer as it can open the door to jobs, resources, and skills that a family needs to not just survive, but thrive. There are many, various and interconnected causes of poverty, and we can't use a magic formula to eradicate it. But, we can consider education as a reducing risk element of high poverty, which may prevent the occurrence of another generation, much poorer. Afghanistan; among many states dealing with mentioned obstacle is a country with one of the lowest education level and where 54.6% of the population lives under poverty line. Moreover, poverty in Afghanistan is concentrated in rural areas and four out of five poor people live in poverty. The East, Northeast, and West-Central regions—where almost half of the inhabitants are poor—have the lowest per capita consumption and highest likelihood of poverty. In cognizance of the vitality of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and education is promulgated as the primary weapon against poverty prevalence. Hence it is important to seek out the effect of different levels of education upon poverty in Afghanistan. This study will evaluate the effect of different levels of education, experience and gender of the employed individuals (employers, self-employed, wage earners and unpaid family workers) as the determinants of poverty. The data for this task comes from the Living Conditions Survey for the years 2008 and 2018. A logistic regression model will be estimated based on this data, with the probability of an individual being poor as the dependent variable and a set of educational levels, experience and gender as explanatory variables. Further, the study will review the available evidences and analyse the role of education in poverty reduction, to identify deficiencies related to basic education in poverty reduction and to come up with some conclusions that can be taken into account in the planning of effective basic education for poverty reduction. Keywords Afghanistan, Education, poverty, job rate, opportunities, development. INTRODUCTION Having 'No Poverty' thus ending poverty in all its forms as the number one on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda for 2030, combined with a range of strategies by international organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the UNDP, etc., is a global pledge and a sincere concern for poverty reduction in order to improve human development and good livelihoods. Modern development theories have increasingly placed greater emphasis on the need for human development and investment as an exit path or a way out of poverty. The worldview that education and human capital are important to economic growth and, consequently, lead to poverty reduction, gained much prominence in the mid- 1990s when it was discovered that the economic success of East Asian countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s was largely due to their investment in education and human capital development (World Bank 1993). Education and poverty are inversely linked. As a result, the higher the educational level of the population of a country, the lower or lesser the number of poor people in that population would be. This is because education provides knowledge and skills that promote higher salaries (Cremina & Nakabugob, 2012). Investing in human capital through education is therefore key to poverty reduction and growth. The direct impact of education on poverty reduction is through an increase in earnings / income or wages. The indirect effect of education on poverty is important in the context of 'human poverty,' because as education improves incomes, the fulfillment of basic needs becomes easier and increases the standard of living, which surely means a reduction in human poverty (Mihai et al, 2015). 1.1 Poverty in Afghanistan The way people experience poverty goes beyond living on less than $1.90 a day. Poverty is not only about lacking the means to make ends or pay the bills for basic services on time. Poverty is multidimensional and encompasses much more than income. According to UN poverty is defined as “a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow ones food or a job to earn ones living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation”.- UN, 1998. UNDP has been working in Afghanistan for more than 50 years on challenges related to climate change and resilience, gender, governance, health, livelihoods and rule of law. Afghanistan is still among the lowest ranked countries on UNDPs human development index, at 168 out of 189 nations covered, and will continue to need significant assistance from the international community to realize the true potential of its resilient and capable of people. In Afghanistan, the growth has not kept pace with population rises of more than 3% per year, leading to a recent fall in GDP per capita. The poverty rate has risen from 36% to 55% today and some 1.9m people are currently food insecure. One in four afghans of working age is unemployed and of those who do work 80% are in insecure jobs. With a young and undereducated population, the number of people looking for work with insufficient skills increases sharply each and every year, but the annual number of businesses starting up has dropped significantly over the last decade(UNDP, 2019). 1.1.2 Trends in Poverty Afghanistan has experienced a sharp increase in poverty since 2011-12. Figure 1 plots the national, urban and rural poverty headcount rates based on the new series and using the three surveys where direct estimation of poverty is possible. Text box 6.1 provides the series of poverty estimates as presented in previous reports and according to the revised methodology as presented in section 1.2.1. Poverty headcount rates measure the share of the population whose monthly per-capita expenditure falls below the poverty line. At the national level, these headcount rates increased from 33.7 percent in 2007-08 to 38.3 percent in 2011-12, followed by a sharp rise to 54.5 percent in 2016-17 (ALCS, 2016-2017). Fig. 1: Trend in poverty( 2007-2017) Source: Adapted from Afghanistan Living Condition Survey, 2016-2017 1.2 Education System in Afghanistan Afghanistan’s education system has been devastated by more than four decades of sustained conflict. For many of the country’s children, completing primary school remains a distant dream especially in rural areas and for girls despite recent progress in raising enrolment. In the poorest and remote areas of Afghanistan, enrolment levels vary extensively and girls still lack equal access. There are an estimated 3.7 million children are out-of-school in Afghanistan out of which 60% of them are girls (UNICEF, 2017). The education system in Afghanistan is being rebuilt and restructured. The Ministry of Education (MoE) is responsible for primary and secondary education levels, while the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) supervises tertiary education. In principle, public education is free and primary and lower secondary education is compulsory. Free education through the bachelor’s level is a constitutional right in Afghanistan (ALCSC,2016- 17). 1.2.1 Primary System Oversight Primary education runs from grades 1 to 6. Children typically begin school between the ages of six and eight. The primary curriculum is consistent nationwide; however, teachers can tailor it to the local content. Primary education is divided into two cycles. The first cycle covers grade 1 to 3, and the curriculum includes subjects such as religious studies, first language (Dari or Pashtu, depending on the region), mathematics, arts, and physical education. The second cycle includes grades 4 to 6. The curriculum covers the same subjects as the first cycle, plus additional subjects such as natural sciences, history, geography, and a secondary language (Dari or Pashtu, depending on the region). At the end of grade 6, students must pass an examination to gain admission to lower secondary education (Maktabeh Motevasteh). At this point, they may opt to pursue a religious studies track, or a more general education track. The vast majority of students pursue the latter. 1.2.2 Secondary System Oversight Secondary education includes 2 three-year cycles. The first cycle, from grades 7 to 9, is referred to as lower secondary education, and the second cycle, from grades 10 to 12, is referred as higher secondary education. The curriculum of the first cycle includes subjects such as religious studies, local languages, mathematics, natural sciences, social studies, foreign languages (English, German, French and Russian), and physical education. Furthermore, the curriculum of second cycle comprises subjects such as mathematics, sciences, biology, physics, chemistry and foreign languages (English, German, French and Russian) 1.2.3 Tertiary System Oversight The Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) is responsible for the administration of higher education, including funding, policy development, institution establishment, quality assurance, and advanced teacher education.