Education Quality and Development Accounting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Schoellman, Todd
• 署名单位: Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdr025
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 388-417
• 关键词: school quality; immigrants; GROWTH; outcomes; returns; skills

摘要

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.