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Robert Solow's model of "exogenous" economic growth driven by the global diffusion of technology is out of fashion because it is contradicted by empirical evidence of income divergence. Today, economic growth is considered "endogenous" and institutions are seen as central to the long-term growth process. At the same time, non-income measures of quality of life do see strong patterns of global growth and convergence. This suggests that institutions may be less important to achieve progress in broader quality of life while a larger and important role concerns the factors that drive exogenous change, including the flow of technology and ideas.

This paper surveys the empirical and theoretical link between education and growth in the growth process of Asian countries. Particular attention is paid to the link between education and productivity, and to models that characterize key features of growth processes of Asian countries. Empirical studies show that these key features include: risk of falling into poverty traps, focussing more on technology adoption rather than creation, and possible technology–skill mismatch. The surveyed studies provide policy implications for each of these features. For instance, to avoid the poverty trap and for efficient adoption of technologies, accumulation of human capital — specifically general human capital — and width of human capital are crucial. To avoid the technology–skill mismatch, the speed of technology upgrading should be appropriate to take full advantage of learning-by-doing and the earning potential of the current stock of specific human capital.

Living standards in China have greatly improved over the past few decades. Both sustained economic growth and an expansion of the social security system have contributed to a sharp reduction in the number of people in poverty. However, urban–rural inequalities remain large, and some of the poorest households are being left behind. Further reforms are needed to ensure that the benefits of future growth are shared and that marginalized groups have the opportunity to actively participate in the economy. In particular, policy settings should be adjusted to increase access to good quality education and healthcare for rural and migrant workers and to improve the portability of social security benefits. Changes to the social assistance system that raise work incentives and protect low-income households in poorer locations are also a priority. New spending measures can be funded by adjustments to the tax system which will, in themselves, benefit inclusiveness.

This study traces short- to long-term adverse effects of the colossal flood 2010 on educational outcomes of children and adolescents (age 5–16 years) in the flooded districts of Pakistan. Taking advantage of the flood — a type of quasi-natural experimental research design we utilized a difference-in-differences (DID) approach with inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTWs) to estimate the impact of the flood on educational outcomes by using a household surveys’ dataset (six waves). We compare educational outcomes out-of-school or dropout from school of — children and adolescents in the flooded households with the educational outcomes of individuals of same age groups in the non-flooded households before, during and after the flood. Our findings reveal that, on an average, 39 out of 1000 children and adolescents in the flooded districts, compared with their counterparts in the non-flooded districts, were not admitted in any educational institutions and 16 of them dropped out from schools during the flood. The effect of flood on education of children and adolescents, then, disappeared after 2–4 years after the flood. The education outcomes of children and adolescents in flooded households in rural areas compared with their peers in non-flooded districts were severely affected by the flood. Mirroring the impact of flood on education sector to the current heavy flood 2022 in Pakistan or pandemic COVID-19 is similarly compelling nations around the world for closure of their schools and educational institutions. The findings of this study may have some policy implications in terms of identifying the most vulnerable children and adolescents to mitigate the adverse impact of the natural disasters such as flood or pandemic on education outcomes and particularly significant to pinpoint shocks of disasters that have large and long-run impacts on human capital accumulation.

Several empirical studies have examined the gender-differentiated effects of education on economic growth or on a steady-state level of economic output, using cross-country data to determine the quantitative importance of these effects and the direction of correlation. This chapter reports on a similar study of the gender effects of education using province-level data for Turkey. It finds that female education positively and significantly affects the steady-state level of labor productivity, while male education has either positive or insignificant effects. A separate examination of the effect of the educational gender gap finds a negative relationship with output. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity analyses, such as elimination of outlier observations, controls for simultaneity and measurement errors, controls for omitted variables through the inclusion of regional dummy variables, the use of steady-state versus growth equations, and the consideration of different samples.

This chapter uses data from a commissioned nationwide sample survey of some 1,100 female-headed households, as well as from focus groups with female household heads. Women-headed households constitute about one-tenth of Jordan's households. By region of residence, religion, and household size they differ little from households in the country at large. But nearly half of them (48 percent) are living below the poverty line, compared with about 13 percent in the population at large. Their annual spending is less than one-third of the nationwide average. Very few of the women household heads work outside the home: 78 percent of them are not and have never been employed. Their education levels are low: about 54 percent are either illiterate or have only basic schooling, and about 27 percent have secondary education. The problems faced by women household heads include malnutrition (a problem in nearly one in five of these families); social stigma attached to themselves and their children; problems in rearing their sons, many of whom drop out of school and become socially withdrawn; and pressures from their own or their husband's family. Recommendations are made for policies and other measures to assist female-headed households.

In recent decades, the Middle East and North Africa region achieved substantial improvement in women's education, but without a commensurate increase in women's participation in the labor market. Using primary household survey data collected in 2008 in Amman, Cairo, and Sana'a, this chapter empirically investigates whether education acts as a vehicle for labor market participation among urban women. As a baseline, we investigate the determinants of female labor force participation by means of a single-equation probit model. Based on the results of the probit model, we analyze the role of social norms. Results confirm that education increases female labor supply. However, when levels of schooling are considered, only high levels of education (post-secondary/university/post-university education) show a positive and significant effect. The study also confirms the negative association between traditional attitudes and female labor supply. Thus, policies in the region that aim to raise female labor force participation need to focus more broadly than on investment in education, to take account of other economic and non-economic barriers to female labor supply. Further investment in education in itself may not achieve the full intended goal for women in the labor market.

In 2002, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a goal of quadrupling per capita income by the year 2020. Starting at income levels of the year 2000, this would require a growth rate of 7.2 percent per annum in per capita income or close to 8.0 percent in GDP. Such unresolved and emerging problems as growing income disparities, increasing pollution, pressures on infrastructure, the inefficiency of stateowned enterprises, and political instability are often cited as reasons to doubt the attainability of the CCP's goal. However, China's progress in addressing fundamental constraints that might limit rapid economic growth augurs well for the success of its economic goals. Although there are disagreements about economic policy among top leaders, the continued transformation into a market economy and the promotion of increasing local autonomy in economic matters are not in doubt. In education, China has substantially increased the percentage of its workforce receiving a college education, and continuing growth in this investment in human capital could account for a large portion of the desired growth rate. In addition, the value of improvements in the quality of economic output unmeasured by GDP, such as advances in the quality of health care and education, could raise reported growth rates by as much as 60 percent. Finally, the government's increasing sensitivity to public opinion and issues of inequality and corruption, combined with improving living conditions, have resulted in a level of popular confidence in the government that makes political instability unlikely.

This paper assesses the effects of education and health on economic growth by partitioning the reasons for cross-country variation in income levels into three components: (i) persistent factors influencing the level of output; (ii) time-varying factors influencing the level of output (e.g., levels of health and education); and (iii) persistent factors influencing a country's rate of technical progress. Persistent factors are ones that remain unchanged (e.g., geographical location) or that change only slightly in the time period under study (e.g., potentially endogenous determinants of technical progress such as a country's orientation toward free trade). Multi-level modeling techniques using maximum likelihood methods were used for estimation. This paper draws on earlier work but extends it to use more recently available data including China. The initial analysis used data on 53 countries over the period 1965–1990 and estimated that education improvements accounted for about 14% of economic growth over this period and health improvements accounted for about 11%. The extended analysis, including China, that this paper reports included data from 86 countries over the period 1960–2000 at 10-year intervals. Findings were broadly similar to the initial analysis, although the magnitude of the estimated effects for education and for health were smaller. Taking our range of models and parameter estimates into account, we feel that education improvements probably accounted for 5%–8% of China's economic growth between 1970 and 2000 and that health improvements accounted for 1%–5%. Our small and imprecise China-specific estimate of health's effect probably results from the atypical pattern in China of successful early efforts to improve health followed by stagnation in health during the later period of rapid growth.

This paper offers an explanation of the quantitative changes in education spending by the framework of demand analysis, including the changes in the ratio of educational funding to GDP in the period 1991–2002. The income effect is estimated mainly by using cross-provincial data, while time series data are used to estimate the price effect. Changes in government and non-government spending through time can be satisfactorily explained by the income and price effects. Demand for education services in the three levels of primary school, secondary school and higher education, and aggregate demand for all education services are investigated. The relation between income inequality and inequality in education opportunities is briefly discussed. Ten important findings are stated.

This paper updates our knowledge of Chinese school enrollment and graduation patterns by analyzing the 2000 Chinese Census. Looking at the school enrollment and attainment snapshot in 2000 and comparing these rates with the enrollment rates in 1990 provides us with important insight into the effect of economic, social and institutional reforms of the 1990s on the generation of students coming through the system in the early post economic reform era. The findings show that substantial progress has been made in China's goal of universal education for all children through the 9th grade.

Recent research literature on migration in China has mainly focused on adult migrants. As more and more people participate in the migration process and as migrants expand the duration of their stays in cities, migrant children increasingly become part of the migration stream. The presence of large numbers of migrant children in cities, especially children without local hukou, creates major problems for their parents and challenges for education policy-makers. In this paper, we examine the school enrollment of migrant children who resided in cities of Guangdong province in 1995. Using data from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey, we apply a research strategy that incorporates both migration origin as well as destination. This allows us to estimate school enrollment rates for temporary migrant children, permanent migrant children, and local children, in addition to non-migrant children at the place of origin. Two major findings emerge from multivariate analyses of school enrollment. First, temporary migrant children are much less likely to be enrolled in school compared to local children. Temporary migrants with less than one year of residence in cities suffer the most. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, permanent migrant children are more likely to be enrolled in school than local children due largely to the highly selective nature of their parents. Second, compared to non-migrant children at the place of origin, rural temporary migrant children from Guangdong also encounter a major disadvantage in terms of school enrollment. As education becomes more and more important for socio-economic mobility in the Chinese society, such disadvantages faced by temporary migrant children is likely to have detrimental and long-term consequences for migrant children and for urban society as a whole.

Since the 1980s health care reform in rural China, the coverage of public health insurance has considerably diminished and the price of medical service continues to increase. Using data from the 1991 and 1997 China Health and Nutrition Surveys, this paper examines the rural residents' demand for medical care and illustrates the impact of the reform. Our study reveals a positive relationship between education and health status, and a negative relationship between education and medical expenditure. Simultaneously, the income effect of medical care is inelastic (0.31), which means that individuals with lower income are burdened with higher medical expenditure. In addition, the income effect significantly influences the decision to seek care when ill, which implies a credit constraint in health care consumption. There has been a persistent increase of inequality in rural China. Our study suggests that the situation is much worse if we take into account the health inequality and higher medical expenditure of the poor people.