Is wealth found in the soil or in the brain? Investing in farm people in Malawi

Should a typical developing country invest more in agriculture or education? At what stage of development is it optimal to invest more in each of these sectors? These are important questions that governments of developing countries grapple with when designing investment plans. In this paper, I propose a soil–human capital conceptual framework of development and use it to explain estimates of agricultural returns to schooling in Malawi. I use panel survey data for Malawi and rely on the exogenous education policy changes and spatial variation in access to schooling to identify effects of schooling on agricultural incomes. In addition, I correct for selection into income activities within a panel data and instrumental variables estimation framework. I find annual agricultural returns to schooling in Malawi of 3%–4% after correcting for selection and unobserved heterogeneity and 7% in the uncorrected specifications. I also find consistently higher returns to schooling in the nonagricultural sector for those not living in the village of birth and higher returns in the agricultural sector for those living in the village of birth. Given the size of the farm sector, wealth in Malawi is still in the soil, but that future growth in wealth depends on human capital investments. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.