Students around the world are going to school but many of them are not learning -- an emerging gap in human capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper introduces a new global data set measuring learning in 164 countries. The data cover 98 percent of the world’s population from 2000 to 2017. The data set will be publicly available and updated at regular intervals by the World Bank and is designed to serve as a public good to accelerate global policy and research agendas focused on quality education and human capital formation. The paper presents several motivating facts in a first application of the data: (a) although enrollment has increased worldwide, learning progress is more limited; (b) girls outperform boys on learning -- a positive gender gap -- in contrast to a negative gender gap observed for schooling; (c) human capital when measured by both schooling and learning accounts for between a fifth to half of cross-country income differences -- a middle ground in the recent development accounting literature and (d) average estimates mask important underlying heterogeneity by country income status and region. These stylized facts demonstrate the potential of this new global dataset to reveal insights into the relationship between human capital and economic development.
Details
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Document Date
2019/02/14
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Document Type
Policy Research Working Paper
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Report Number
WPS8742
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Volume No
1
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Total Volume(s)
1
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Country
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Region
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Disclosure Date
2019/02/14
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Disclosure Status
Disclosed
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Doc Name
Measuring Human Capital
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Keywords
human capital; changing nature of work; millennium development goal; years of schooling; returns to schooling; human capital formation; standard deviation; primary enrollment rate; rates of return; output per worker; supply of skill; regional assessment; average test score; wealth of nation; economics of education; Gender Gap; human capital accumulation; human capital stock; return to investment; aggregate production function; capital-output ratio; central limit theorem; share of income; universal primary enrollment; human capital variables; survival and health; measure of uncertainty; degree of confidence; primary school enrollment; international assessment; parameter value; fixed effect; schooling level; cross-country income; standard error; global scale
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Citation
Measuring Human Capital (English). Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8742 Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/540801550153933986/Measuring-Human-Capital