Measuring Human Capital
Students around the world are going to school but are not learning -- an emerging gap in human capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper introduces a new data set measuring learning in 164 countries and territories. The data cover 98 pe...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/540801550153933986/Measuring-Human-Capital http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31280 |
| Summary: | Students around the world are going to
school but are not learning -- an emerging gap in human
capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper
introduces a new data set measuring learning in 164
countries and territories. The data cover 98 percent of the
world's population from 2000 to 2017. The data set will
be publicly available and updated annually by the World
Bank. The paper presents several stylized facts in a first
application of the data: (a) although enrollment has
increased worldwide, learning has stagnated; (b) girls
outperform boys on learning -- a positive gender gap -- in
contrast to a negative gender gap observed for schooling;
(c) learning is associated with growth on a global scale;
(d) associations with growth are heterogenous; and (e) human
capital accounts for up to a third of cross-country income
differences -- a middle ground in the recent development
accounting literature. These stylized facts demonstrate the
potential of the data to reveal new insights into the
relationship between human capital and economic development. |
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