Review of Economic Studies Vol. 79 No. 1 2012
Education Quality and Development Accounting
Abstract
This paper measures the role of quality-adjusted years of schooling in accounting for cross-country output per worker differences. While data on years of schooling are readily available, data on education quality are not. I use the returns to schooling of foreign-educated immigrants in the U.S. to measure the education quality of their birth country. Immigrants from developed countries earn higher returns than do immigrants from developing countries. I show how to incorporate this measure of education quality into an otherwise standard development accounting exercise. The main result is that cross-country differences in education quality are roughly as important as cross-country differences in years of schooling in accounting for output per worker differences, raising the total contribution of education from 10% to 20% of output per worker differences.
- DOI
- 10.1093/restud/rdr025
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 388-417
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib