New Eldis Key Issues Page: Economic Growth and Education

September 11, 2006 by News Editor

Economic growth and education

Quick guide through the key issues

If more education leads to faster economic growth, then investments in education could pay for themselves in the long run, and could also play a role in reducing poverty. Such reasoning could be crucial in bolstering political support for education investments and ensuring their sustainability. This page considers the evidence for an education-growth link, and explores some of the issues that governments and donors face in making investments which will best take advantage of the potential for education to contribute to economic development.

The papers under rates of return to education look at the differences in productivity and wages between people with different levels of education – one route through which education could ultimately impact on a country's economy as a whole. These papers also shed light on the question of how much money should be allocated to primary, secondary, and higher education, when overall resources are limited. The second section of this page highlights how vocational education has often been neglected when making such decisions. A final set of papers consider how both developed and developing countries can lessen the negative impact, and maximise the positive impact, of the brain drain of educated professionals from poor to rich countries.

http://www.eldis.org/education/economic_growth.htm

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