the effect of education on reducing poverty.

 

This analysis shows that education has been a powerful driver of inclusive

growth over four decades. The doubling of global income per capita between 1980

and 2019 would have been only half as large without advances in educational

attainment. The research also shows that education was responsible for 60–70

percent of real income growth among the world’s poorest 20 percent. In the

absence of considerable efforts to expand access to schooling, the world would

be a much poorer and much more unequal place.

 

Why has education been so successful at reducing global poverty? Unexpectedly,

basic education alone does not explain these large effects. Higher education

also played a major role. Expanding access to higher education allows a broader

group of workers to share high-skill jobs. At the same time, it frees up job

opportunities for low-skilled workers.

 

For example, take a country like India or any of a number of sub-Saharan African

nations with a large traditional sector and a small modern sector. In such

economies, many workers hold highly unproductive jobs in agriculture. As

education expands, some of these workers can take on more high-skill jobs.

 

But the agricultural workers who stay behind also become more productive. If too

many people are employed on the same plot, the marginal productivity of each

individual may be quite low. When some people leave, the productivity of the

remaining farmworkers rises as total output remains largely unchanged, which