Contribution of education and educational equality to economic growth

Abstract

In this article we examine how the contribution of investment in education to economic growth varies if the initial level of education and the improvement of educational equality are different. Our main finding is that the contribution of education to economic growth is larger and statistically more significant in the countries with relatively low level of initial education and in the countries with relatively high improvement of educational equality.

Acknowledgement

I thank Yasuhide Tanaka and Shoji Nishijima (Kobe University) for helpful comments. I am responsible for all remaining errors.

Notes

¹ Empirical studies about education and economic growth are well surveyed in Kruger and Lindahl (2001).

² The reader who need the dataset may contact the author.

³ The data source of these variables is Penn World Table 6.1. (http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/).

⁴ Galor and Zeira (1993) and Ljungqvist (1993) provide the model in which capital market imperfection prevents the poor people from attaining education.