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Education doesn't seem to have much effect on economic growth. Why not? > Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capital attributab
by barry-cotter 5y ago
Education doesn't seem to have much effect on economic growth. Why not?
> Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of
output per worker. This implies that the association of educational capital growth with
conventional measures of total factor production is large, strongly statistically significant, and negative. These are “on average” results, derived from imposing a constant
coefficient. However, the development impact of education varied widely across countries
and has fallen short of expectations for three possible reasons. First, the institutional/
governance environment could have been sufficiently perverse that the accumulation
of educational capital lowered economic growth. Second, marginal returns to education could have fallen rapidly as the supply of educated labor expanded while demand
remained stagnant. Third, educational quality could have been so low that years of
schooling created no human capital. The extent and mix of these three phenomena vary
from country to country in explaining the actual economic impact of education, or the
lack thereof.