Human capital is of utmost importance for the future of our knowledge economies and societies. However, it is unequally distributed in Europe, contributing to marked spatial patterns of economic prosperity within and across countries. In many cases, these patterns have a long history. To understand them better, it requires to go back in time, when mass schooling was starting to become a reality across Europe. Taking a long-run perspective over more than 150 years, this book shows the development and the distribution of human capital in the regions of Europe and its connections with the economy. It provides insights into recent research findings in this area, including theoretical advances and the use of new empirical data.
As regional inequality looms large in the policy debate in China, this volume brings together a selection of papers from authors whose work has had real impact on policy, so that researchers and policy makers can have access to them in one place.
Future growth in the countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) will increasingly depend on innovation. And innovation requires skills. This makes it important, as countries plan for recovery, to undertake reforms to reduce the skills shortages that the previous growth episode exposed. Education systems have a very important role to play in creating the right skills. But education systems in the region fall short of the demands of their economies in two major ways. The first is that despite high levels of enrollment they do not produce enough graduates with the right skills. Students graduate with diplomas, not with skills, because the quality of the education for many students is poor. In large part this is because education systems remain focused on providing an excellent education to a few at the expense of improving the quality of learning for the majority. Moreover, the systems are still making the transition from teaching the basics to inculcating higher order skills such as critical-thinking and problem solving. The second way in which education systems fall short is that outside of a few countries in the EU there are few opportunities for adults to retrain, or acquire new skills. This book argues that generating more of the right skills requires a fundamental change of approach in the education systems in the region so that they aim for, and deliver, higher quality education for the vast majority of students (not just diplomas but skills). To start with, education systems need to turn the lights on and take seriously the measurement of what students actually learn as opposed to measurement of the inputs into the education process on the implicit assumption that learning follows. Policy makers also need to move away from the focus on inputs and processes and increase the emphasis on incentives.
Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is a central driver of sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and successful societies. More human capital is associated with higher earnings for people, higher income for countries, and stronger cohesion in societies. Much of the hard-won human capital gains in many economies over the past decade is at risk of being eroded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Urgent action is needed to protect these advances, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. Designing the needed interventions, targeting them to achieve the highest effectiveness, and navigating difficult trade-offs make investing in better measurement of human capital now more important than ever. The Human Capital Index (HCI)—launched in 2018 as part of the Human Capital Project—is an international metric that benchmarks the key components of human capital across economies. The HCI is a global effort to accelerate progress toward a world where all children can achieve their full potential. Measuring the human capital that children born today can expect to attain by their 18th birthdays, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers and underscores the importance of government and societal investments in human capital. The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 presents the first update of the HCI, using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital. The new data—collected before the global onset of COVID-19—can act as a baseline to track its effects on health and education outcomes. The report highlights how better measurement is essential for policy makers to design effective interventions and target support. In the immediate term, investments in better measurement and data use will guide pandemic containment strategies and support for those who are most affected. In the medium term, better curation and use of administrative, survey, and identification data can guide policy choices in an environment of limited fiscal space and competing priorities. In the longer term, the hope is that economies will be able to do more than simply recover lost ground. Ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can pave the way for today’s children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them.
Measuring Human Capital addresses a country's most important resource: its own people. Bettering human capital benefits individuals and their country and leads to improved sustainability for the future. For many years economists only used Gross Domestic Product (GDP), now acknowledged to be inadequate without supplemental measures, to gauge a country's overall value. There is now a recognition that many variables contribute to a country's worth, which make accurate measurement difficult. Looking beyond GDP by focusing on human capital, researchers, policymakers, government officials, and students can understand what elements impact human capital and how they might improve it in order to increase economic growth and well-being. - Addresses six major measures of human capital, covering at least 130 countries - Describes both monetary and index estimates - Includes two monetary measures by the World Bank and the Inclusive Wealth Report by UNEP and the Urban Institute of Kyushu University - Includes four index measures by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington, United Nations Development Programme, World Economic Forum, and World Bank - Includes two country chapters, one on China and the other on the United States
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.
Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. New ways of production are adopted, markets expand, and societies evolve. But some changes provoke more attention than others, in part due to the vast uncertainty involved in making predictions about the future. The 2019 World Development Report will study how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Technological progress disrupts existing systems. A new social contract is needed to smooth the transition and guard against rising inequality. Significant investments in human capital throughout a person’s lifecycle are vital to this effort. If workers are to stay competitive against machines they need to train or retool existing skills. A social protection system that includes a minimum basic level of protection for workers and citizens can complement new forms of employment. Improved private sector policies to encourage startup activity and competition can help countries compete in the digital age. Governments also need to ensure that firms pay their fair share of taxes, in part to fund this new social contract. The 2019 World Development Report presents an analysis of these issues based upon the available evidence.
Human Capital and Institutions is concerned with human capital in its many dimensions and brings to the fore the role of political, social, and economic institutions in human capital formation and economic growth. Written by leading economic historians, including pioneers in historical research on human capital, the chapters in this text offer a broad-based view of human capital in economic development. The issues they address range from nutrition in pre-modern societies to twentieth-century advances in medical care; from the social institutions that provided temporary relief to workers in the middle and lower ranges of the wage scale to the factors that affected the performance of those who reached the pinnacle in business and art; and from political systems that stifled the advance of literacy to those that promoted public and higher education. Just as human capital has been a key to economic growth, so has the emergence of appropriate institutions been a key to the growth of human capital.
Introduction -- Concepts and definitions -- Methodological issues -- Implementation and measurement issues -- Satellite account for education and training -- Human capital satellite account: an example for Canada -- Human capital country studies -- Recommendations and further work -- References
A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.
