The Century of Education

Christian Morrisson and Fabrice Murtin

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007)database. The correlation between the two sets of average years of schooling in 1960 is equal to 0.96.We use a measurement error framework to merge the two databases, while correcting for a systematicmeasurement bias in Cohen and Soto (2007) linked to differential mortality across educational groups.Descriptive statistics show a continuous spread of education that has accelerated in the second half ofthe twentieth century. We find evidence of fast convergence in years of schooling for a sub-sample ofadvanced countries during the 1870-1914 globalization period, and of modest convergence since1980. Less advanced countries have been excluded from the convergence club in both cases.

Keywords: Inequality; human capital; economic history; copula function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 E27 F02 N00 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-his, nep-hrm and nep-lab
Date: 2009-06
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0934

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