Education, productivity, and inequality

Developing countries spend tens of billions of dollars each year on education. In the face of severe competition for scarce resources, the effectiveness and distribution of these expenditures merit careful examination. The need for universal primary education is no longer questioned: the key policy issue is at the secondary level. Does expanding the secondary system make good economic sense for a developing country? Do better-educated workers contribute to economic development, or are they merely being trained for minimal jobs that will waste their skills? Does educational expansion increase the inequality of income by adding to the number of well-paid workers or decrease it by reducing the earnings premium that education can command? Does reducing inequality of access to secondary education increase intergenerational mobility? In this book the authors seek to answer these and other questions.