The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development

Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann

No 07-034, Discussion Papers from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on the role of school quality and quantity. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empirical results show the importance of both minimal and high level skills, the complementarity of skills and quality of economic institutions, and robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing countries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes clear that closing the economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.

Keywords: cognitive skills; school systems; economic growth; school attainment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (871)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/repec/sip/07-034.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www-siepr.stanford.edu:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development (2008)
Working Paper: The role of cognitive skills in economic development (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sip:dpaper:07-034

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Shor ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).