Education and Economic Development

Abstract

What is known of the established relationships between education and economic development? This is a question that I have studied for several years, and I wish to summarize my views here. It would perhaps be as well to enter here my caveat that the interrelationships between education, productivity, the economy and society are enormously complex and that we know little about them. I will leave on one side for the moment, too, accusations of philistinism - I love the arts need I say more? I write as an economist who has worked in many fields of economics, but I also write as one who has taught for seventeen years, and who has been involved in the administration of public school systems for almost as long. I reject the distinction between "economist" and "educator" - though, in economics (as elsewhere) to assume the mantle of educator is, I have discovered, to lose caste in some circles. Perhaps the wisest place to begin would be the widely repeated statements about the part of economic growth which has been measured and attributed to education in a number of - especially
American publications. In particular, this part of my paper draws upon the analyses published by Mr. Edward Denison: before I describe it I should emphasize that the statistical work he has done has been extremely laborious, and I have the highest admiration for it. This work is an attempt to evaluate the benefits of education. Many benefits are non-commensurate without an assumption that a common numerical value can be assigned to them (and these numbers - indeed the very process of assigning numbers - are, of course, in dispute). My own original work lay in the back-breaking task of trying to evaluate the costs of education.