Refuting the OECD-World Bank development narrative: was East Asia’s ‘Economic Miracle’ primarily driven by education quality and cognitive skills?^*

* Both authors contributed equally to this piece.

ABSTRACT

Founded on several highly influential quantitative studies, the past decade has witnessed the OECD and World Bank increasingly converge on the view that cognitive levels of students and education quality, as proxied by international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), are the primary determinant of national economic growth worldwide. More recent OECD and World Bank pronouncements have further suggested these dynamics are clearly illustrated in East Asia’s education and ‘Economic Miracle’, in particular the cases of South Korea and Singapore. Herein we utilise the OECD’s own data to examine this new development narrative, finding little evidence in support of these claims.

KEYWORDS:

• Human capital theory
• PIAAC
• PISA
• Asian Tigers
• Singapore
• South Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Hikaru Komatsu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1195-1648

Jeremy Rappleye http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0717-8253

Notes

* Both authors contributed equally to this piece.

1 It is worth noting here that Taiwan is not listed as a separate country within World Bank data for political reasons. Japan is rarely mentioned these days, perhaps given that it has world-leading levels of ‘human capital’ (e.g., third on the new World Bank Human Development Index) but has been in a prolonged recession and faces a shrinking economy, basically refuting the OECD-World Bank narrative all by itself.