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  • 2019
  • Working Paper

The Great Convergence: Skill Accumulation and Mass Education in Africa and Asia, 1870-2010

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
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Abstract

While human capital has gained prominence in new vintages of growth theory, economists have struggled to find the positive externalities of mass education in developing economies. We shed new light on the economic significance of the global 'schooling revolution' by looking at a different indicator of human capital accumulation - the relative price of skilled labor - and placing it in a long-term global perspective. Based on a new wage dataset we constructed for various blue- and white-collar occupations in 50 African and Asian countries between 1870-2010, we reveal that skill-premiums have fallen dramatically everywhere in the course of the 20th century, and that they have now converged with levels that dominated in the West already for centuries. While such a 'great convergence' in skill-premiums is not a sufficient condition for Schumpeterian growth by itself, the growing availability of affordable skills is a necessary condition. Our findings, therefore, shed a more optimistic light on the long-term economic gains of mass education in the global South than standard growth regressions have hitherto done.

Keywords

Mass Education; Skill Premium; History; Human Capital; Education; Competency and Skills; Labor; Cost; Africa; Asia

Citation

Frankema, Ewout, and Marlous van Waijenburg. "The Great Convergence: Skill Accumulation and Mass Education in Africa and Asia, 1870-2010." Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Discussion Paper, No. 14150, November 2019.
  • SSRN

About The Author

Marlous van Waijenburg

Business, Government and the International Economy
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
  • Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
  • From Coast to Hinterland: Fiscal State Formation in British and French West Africa, c. 1880–1960 By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
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