This has led international institutions and economists increasingly to emphasize

the need to prioritize quality to promote economic development.

 

However, my research shows that education quantity, not quality, was at the

center of global poverty reduction. From 1980 to 2019, the share of the world’s

citizens with no schooling declined from 35 percent to 15 percent, while the

share of adults with at least some secondary education grew from 25 percent to

60 percent. Meanwhile, education quality based on test scores stagnated.

 

India’s District Primary Education Program, implemented in 1994, is particularly

illustrative.

 

The University of California San Diego’s Gaurav Khanna found that the program

significantly expanded access to primary education, with no effect on education

quality (Khanna 2023). Yet it generated a 13 percent increase in earnings per

year of schooling. In a world where two-thirds of global poverty reduction since

1980 was driven by expanded access to schooling, it seems unlikely that focusing

on quality alone will be enough to promote further inclusive growth.

 

Policymakers and economists sometimes do not evaluate education policy the way

they do other economic factors; they assume that education has a fixed average

return of 10 percent. In the presence of technological progress, however, the

returns are much larger. Failure to expand access to education would represent

an enormous missed opportunity to enhance inclusive growth.