When looking at the huge human welfare gains in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong in the second half of the 20th century, no-one argues that this was because they engaged in more interventions of this type.
Every single one of them via government policy ensured that their kids had basic education (upto 12 years of schooling). This was prior to their economic growth. How do we know that human well being today is not caused by investments in education?
Do you have a better analysis of this? Lots of things happened before economic growth and could have plausibly contributed to it. Remember not to select on the dependent variable: perhaps countries which didn’t produce huge welfare gains also implemented widespread K-12 education.
perhaps countries which didn’t produce huge welfare gains also implemented widespread K-12 education
That list of countries is zero.
On the contrary, countries with widespread education always had huge welfare gains. They did well in terms of life expectancy, under 5 mortality rate, babies per woman (a reasonable indicator for modernity, and women’s empowerment).
If they were market economies like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong they also had gains in income. China saw major improvements in education and social indicators pre-1979 reforms, it saw improvements in income after opening up, and social indicators have since improved (after a stall in 1980′s). (Not forgetting or dismissing the great Chinese famine)
Cuba on the other hand has high life expectancy but very little money. It’s educational levels for women aged 15-24 are close to USA (not talking about quality) 13.3 vs 13.9
perhaps countries which didn’t produce huge welfare gains also implemented widespread K-12 education
That list of countries is zero.
I’d like to see a source for that, given the Gapminder chart of years of schooling vs. GDP has plenty of examples of countries which have increased the number of years of schooling and seen no increase in GDP—e.g. Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Micronesia et al
Like I mentioned earlier, I have very little interest in economic growth. Education is a necessary but not sufficient condition, I said as much when I wrote ” Education drives Health, and in case of market economies it drives wealth also.” implying that other policies have an effect on wealth. Cuba is a good example, it is almost on par with USA in terms of life expectancy, babies per woman, but not money. This is because of their education levels.
Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova are ex USSR countries, the transition from communism had been catastrophic in 1990′s. Even so their human development indicators are decent with life expectancy at 70+ years. Micronesia is behind at 65 years life expectancy.
Babies per women are around 3 for micronesia and Kyrgyz Republic, with moldova less than 2. Those countries are doing ok, even as I wish things were better for all of them.
I already listed the best papers I have read above in addition you can read Amartya Sen’s books.
Hunger and Public Action published in 1991 is still worth reading, his comparison of India, China, Kerala is illuminating.
But my point was that your blanket statement about there being no countries which implemented widespread K-12 education and didn’t have huge welfare gains (whether as wealth or e.g. HDI) is wrong on its face. e.g. South Africa and Switzerland since 1990 increased mean years of schooling by 50% (from 8y to 12y); South Africa saw its HDI increase by 0.04 but Switzerland saw it increase by 0.11 over the same period. OTOH, there are countries with very little increase in time spent in school which have seen huge increases in HDI.
oh good. now we are thinking about individual countries their histories and lessons that they can offer. Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze introduced me to this way of thinking in their book Hunger and Public Action, their latest “An Uncertain Glory: India and its contradictions” is good too.
Glad you brought up HDI which consists of three parts Education, Life Expectancy and Income.
In South Africa Education as you noted is up, Income is basically flat, Life Expectancy on the other hand in back to 1993 levels after crashing hard due to he AIDS crisis. South Africa given the history of apartheid should be analyzed as two populations 1) White 2) Blacks + others. Unfortunately I don’t have the disaggregated data for those groups.
OTOH, there are countries with very little increase in time spent in school which have seen huge increases in HDI.
Care to share the list? Oil (or resource) wealth is one way HDI increases without any real change in people’s lives. I discount that kind of HDI improvements.
But my point was that your blanket statement about there being no countries which implemented widespread K-12 education and didn’t have huge welfare gains
I wrote that to be slightly provocative, can we find one country that is an exception it’s possible (I have been looking and haven’t found one). The fundamental point being that when we look at countries and their history we find that education levels explain life expectancy. This can be seen from China (pre-reform 1979), Taiwan, South Korea, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Kerala, Mauritius, Cuba etc..
Easterlin Paradox can be explained by Education levels
I’m not going to get into this, but if you think this is the answer to big questions of how to increase economic growth, it would be better to properly define the dataset and show an analysis which demonstrates causation rather than mere correlation.
The idea that education is important is not new. Since the early 1990′s UNDP has published Human Development Index, consisting of Education, Health and Income. Why the EA community discarded education is beyond my understanding.
Kerala had good social indicators by 1970 just 2 decades after independence and has been ahead of China until very recently in those indices. Amartya Sen discusses Kerala, China, Tamil Nadu in his books.
Getting downvoted isn’t ‘abuse’ - it’s just a signal that people disagree with you. :) I’m not convinced of the case you’re making for education, for example.
I hope that karma isn’t a signal of disagreement! We’ve always had norms of karma being a signal for good and bad content, and explicitly not about whether you agree or disagree with someone. I definitely upvote many things I disagree with, and downvote many things that argue badly for conclusions I agree with.
Like Habryka, I agree that downvotes aren’t abuse, but I’d prefer downvotes to be used for poor quality or inaccurate arguments rather than skepticism or respectful disagreement.
Any one downvote without comment is understandable. I persistently get downvoted. At that point most people leave the community. Are those the norms that we want to create?
I never downvote people I disagree with, I ask them why and try to learn from them (or teach them).
Every single one of them via government policy ensured that their kids had basic education (upto 12 years of schooling). This was prior to their economic growth. How do we know that human well being today is not caused by investments in education?
Do you have a better analysis of this? Lots of things happened before economic growth and could have plausibly contributed to it. Remember not to select on the dependent variable: perhaps countries which didn’t produce huge welfare gains also implemented widespread K-12 education.
That list of countries is zero.
On the contrary, countries with widespread education always had huge welfare gains. They did well in terms of life expectancy, under 5 mortality rate, babies per woman (a reasonable indicator for modernity, and women’s empowerment).
If they were market economies like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong they also had gains in income. China saw major improvements in education and social indicators pre-1979 reforms, it saw improvements in income after opening up, and social indicators have since improved (after a stall in 1980′s). (Not forgetting or dismissing the great Chinese famine)
visualization here
Cuba on the other hand has high life expectancy but very little money. It’s educational levels for women aged 15-24 are close to USA (not talking about quality) 13.3 vs 13.9
visualization here
No surprise that the life expectancy of Cuba and USA are also close
visualization here
In summary Education drives Health, and in case of market economies it drives wealth also.
I’d like to see a source for that, given the Gapminder chart of years of schooling vs. GDP has plenty of examples of countries which have increased the number of years of schooling and seen no increase in GDP—e.g. Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Micronesia et al
Like I mentioned earlier, I have very little interest in economic growth. Education is a necessary but not sufficient condition, I said as much when I wrote ” Education drives Health, and in case of market economies it drives wealth also.” implying that other policies have an effect on wealth. Cuba is a good example, it is almost on par with USA in terms of life expectancy, babies per woman, but not money. This is because of their education levels.
Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova are ex USSR countries, the transition from communism had been catastrophic in 1990′s. Even so their human development indicators are decent with life expectancy at 70+ years. Micronesia is behind at 65 years life expectancy.
Babies per women are around 3 for micronesia and Kyrgyz Republic, with moldova less than 2. Those countries are doing ok, even as I wish things were better for all of them.
I already listed the best papers I have read above in addition you can read Amartya Sen’s books.
Hunger and Public Action published in 1991 is still worth reading, his comparison of India, China, Kerala is illuminating.
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198283652.001.0001/acprof-9780198283652-chapter-11
Wolfgang Lutz and his coauthors papers are good too
https://scholar.google.at/citations?user=QRH1wRYAAAAJ&hl=en
Will have a look at those links.
But my point was that your blanket statement about there being no countries which implemented widespread K-12 education and didn’t have huge welfare gains (whether as wealth or e.g. HDI) is wrong on its face. e.g. South Africa and Switzerland since 1990 increased mean years of schooling by 50% (from 8y to 12y); South Africa saw its HDI increase by 0.04 but Switzerland saw it increase by 0.11 over the same period. OTOH, there are countries with very little increase in time spent in school which have seen huge increases in HDI.
oh good. now we are thinking about individual countries their histories and lessons that they can offer. Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze introduced me to this way of thinking in their book Hunger and Public Action, their latest “An Uncertain Glory: India and its contradictions” is good too.
Glad you brought up HDI which consists of three parts Education, Life Expectancy and Income.
In South Africa Education as you noted is up, Income is basically flat, Life Expectancy on the other hand in back to 1993 levels after crashing hard due to he AIDS crisis. South Africa given the history of apartheid should be analyzed as two populations 1) White 2) Blacks + others. Unfortunately I don’t have the disaggregated data for those groups.
Care to share the list? Oil (or resource) wealth is one way HDI increases without any real change in people’s lives. I discount that kind of HDI improvements.
Relevant latest data on HDI
http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdro_statistical_data_table7_15.pdf
I wrote that to be slightly provocative, can we find one country that is an exception it’s possible (I have been looking and haven’t found one). The fundamental point being that when we look at countries and their history we find that education levels explain life expectancy. This can be seen from China (pre-reform 1979), Taiwan, South Korea, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Kerala, Mauritius, Cuba etc..
Easterlin Paradox can be explained by Education levels
Education and Happiness: a Further Explanation to the Easterlin Paradox?
I’m not going to get into this, but if you think this is the answer to big questions of how to increase economic growth, it would be better to properly define the dataset and show an analysis which demonstrates causation rather than mere correlation.
I have very little interest in economic growth. I value basic education, followed by health.
The best papers on the subject are Education and Health: Redrawing the Preston Curve Wolfgang Lutz Endale Kebede
Global Sustainable Development priorities 500 y after Luther: Sola schola et sanitate Wolfgang Lutz
You can find detailed education dataset at http://dataexplorer.wittgensteincentre.org/wcde-v2/
Gapminder which i linked to earlier has a lot of data loaded into it. https://www.gapminder.org/tools
The idea that education is important is not new. Since the early 1990′s UNDP has published Human Development Index, consisting of Education, Health and Income. Why the EA community discarded education is beyond my understanding.
The HDI of 1990′s is itself based on the older Kerala Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model
Kerala had good social indicators by 1970 just 2 decades after independence and has been ahead of China until very recently in those indices. Amartya Sen discusses Kerala, China, Tamil Nadu in his books.
I have never had positive karma on this forum. Don’t be abusive EA forum.
If you think I am wrong vote me down no problem. However take the time to explain why.
Getting downvoted isn’t ‘abuse’ - it’s just a signal that people disagree with you. :) I’m not convinced of the case you’re making for education, for example.
I hope that karma isn’t a signal of disagreement! We’ve always had norms of karma being a signal for good and bad content, and explicitly not about whether you agree or disagree with someone. I definitely upvote many things I disagree with, and downvote many things that argue badly for conclusions I agree with.
This seems fair—though I would hope there would be significant overlap between ‘I agree with this’ and ‘this is a good argument’.
I agree with all of this.
Like Habryka, I agree that downvotes aren’t abuse, but I’d prefer downvotes to be used for poor quality or inaccurate arguments rather than skepticism or respectful disagreement.
Hello Henry_Stanley,
Any one downvote without comment is understandable. I persistently get downvoted. At that point most people leave the community. Are those the norms that we want to create?
I never downvote people I disagree with, I ask them why and try to learn from them (or teach them).