Premium
(In)equality in Education and Economic Development
Author(s) -
Sauer Petra,
Zagler Martin
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/roiw.12142
Subject(s) - gini coefficient , economics , inequality , distribution (mathematics) , position (finance) , panel data , demographic economics , variable (mathematics) , econometrics , economic inequality , mathematics , mathematical analysis , finance
This paper investigates the relationship between the level and the distribution of education and economic development. We contribute to the literature by introducing an interaction term between the education Gini coefficient and average years of schooling. In a dynamic panel over 55 years and 134 countries we provide, on the one hand, strong evidence that more schooling is good for growth, but the coefficient is variable and substantially declining in the degree of inequality. The aggregate benefit to education thus depends on a country's position in the education distribution. On the other hand, we find a slight transitional increase in education inequality to be beneficial at a very low average level of schooling, but detrimental for growth at a relatively high average level. Allowing for the macroeconomic return to education to be heterogeneous with respect to the degree of inequality is therefore paramount in understanding the relationship between education and development.