Paul Glewwe (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226078687
- eISBN:
- 9780226078854
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226078854.001.0001
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
Economists and other researchers have accumulated abundant evidence that education increases workers’ productivity and thus increases their incomes. Education also leads to improvements in health and ...
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Economists and other researchers have accumulated abundant evidence that education increases workers’ productivity and thus increases their incomes. Education also leads to improvements in health and provides many other non-monetary benefits. Policymakers in developing countries also agree that there are important benefits from increasing the education of their citizens; governments in developing countries now spend about $700 billion each year on education. Despite this increased spending, 13% of children in developing countries do not finish primary school, and over one third do not enroll in secondary school. Even more worrisome is that there is a large amount of evidence that students in developing countries learn far less than students in developed countries. While spending even more money may increase enrollment and learning, most developing countries face serious budget constraints that prevent them from devoting significantly larger amounts of money to education. Thus there is an urgent need to find specific, and relatively inexpensive, policies that will lead to better education outcomes in those countries. Fortunately, there has been a large increase in research on education in developing countries in the last two decades, yet these findings are scattered in many different academic journals and other types of publications. Given this situation, this volume has three goals. The first is to take stock of what this recent research has found. The second is to present the implications of this research for education policies in developing countries. Finally, the third is to set priorities for future research on education in those countries.Less
Economists and other researchers have accumulated abundant evidence that education increases workers’ productivity and thus increases their incomes. Education also leads to improvements in health and provides many other non-monetary benefits. Policymakers in developing countries also agree that there are important benefits from increasing the education of their citizens; governments in developing countries now spend about $700 billion each year on education. Despite this increased spending, 13% of children in developing countries do not finish primary school, and over one third do not enroll in secondary school. Even more worrisome is that there is a large amount of evidence that students in developing countries learn far less than students in developed countries. While spending even more money may increase enrollment and learning, most developing countries face serious budget constraints that prevent them from devoting significantly larger amounts of money to education. Thus there is an urgent need to find specific, and relatively inexpensive, policies that will lead to better education outcomes in those countries. Fortunately, there has been a large increase in research on education in developing countries in the last two decades, yet these findings are scattered in many different academic journals and other types of publications. Given this situation, this volume has three goals. The first is to take stock of what this recent research has found. The second is to present the implications of this research for education policies in developing countries. Finally, the third is to set priorities for future research on education in those countries.
