technologies such as AI offer enormous opportunities for productivity growth and

innovation. Yet the size of these gains and who will benefit depend on the

creation of a sufficiently large skilled labor force.

 

Universal basic education has been at the center of education policy in many

developing economies— with positive results. Now more than ever, there is a need

to expand access to high-quality secondary and postsecondary education, for both

equity and efficiency. Education ensures not only that countries can use global

innovations efficiently but also that they share the benefits broadly.

 

Education diminishes poverty

 

Economists have long debated the importance of human capital in economic

development, yet little is known about how well education has lifted poor

people’s standard of living. To take on this research challenge, I built a

microdata base consisting of surveys conducted around 2019 by statistical

institutes in 150 countries. The surveys covered labor forces and individual

incomes. I combined this data with historical information on the evolution of

educational attainment since 1980.

 

This enabled me to measure for the first time the relationship between income

and education for a sample representing 95 percent of the world’s population.

For each country and for different levels of education, I could thus calculate

how much individual incomes increased as people received more education. It also

allowed me to observe how education shapes income inequality—a key to estimating