Education’s Impact on Economic Growth and Productivity

July 2016
Eileen McGivney and Rebecca Winthrop

Human capital is an important input into the economy. Increases in education levels since the 19th
century have been estimated to account for between one-fifth and one-third of economic growth in the
U.S. (Dean 1984, Barro and Lee 2015). On an individual level, the high returns to education reflect its
impact on labor productivity, with an additional year of schooling providing an average 10 percent
increase in wages (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2004). Education has also been identified as a driver of
improved demographic and health outcomes, contributing to decreases in infant mortality and fertility
over the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries (Gakidou et al. 2010, Barro and Lee 2015).

Yet despite massive increases in schooling around the world, where now more than 9 in 10 children are
enrolled in primary school, productivity and growth have been slowing. Many argue that the 20th
century model of schooling is no longer effective at fostering the skills young people need to thrive in a
rapidly changing labor market and to make the most of the new digital technology in the workplace. Skill
gaps have emerged as an important constraint to economies’ capacity to absorb and benefit from fast-
changing new technologies. Additionally, polarization of high- and low-skill jobs may be contributing to
increasing income inequality. The success with which education and skills catch up with technological
progress will be a key determinant of the impact of technological change on productivity and
distributional outcomes.

These forces and the needs of the future economy demand that the education sector focus on
improving the quality and relevance of education and better fostering skills. Most regions in the world
will reach a saturation point in terms of the number of years of schooling that workers complete, but
there is still much improvement to be gained in the skills acquired within those years. Moreover, as
technology continues to change, on-the-job training to update and adapt skills and lifelong learning will
become increasingly important.

Schooling versus skills

In a recent paper, Jorgenson, Ho and Samuels examine growth and productivity in the U.S. from 1947 to
2014 and find that education levels have contributed significantly over time, but predict that in the
future schooling attainment levels will plateau. While entrants to the labor market will continue to have
high levels of education, the increase in levels of education completed is expected to slow. As this trend
materializes across the globe, we reach an important turning point where education’s contribution to
economic growth may slow.

Yet there is much evidence that measuring skills and education by the number of years workers spend in
school is flawed. The quality of education and the level of skills gained while in school vary widely across
the globe.

For example, skill gaps have recently been identified as a cause of differing levels of economic growth
between regions with similar levels of schooling. In The Knowledge Capital of Nations, Hanushek and
Woessman (2015) aim to solve the Latin American “puzzle” of high levels of schooling that did not lead
to high levels of growth. When comparing Latin America and East Asia, they find that while their

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quantity of schooling was similar through the second half of the 20th century, the quality of schooling
could better explain differences in productivity. Using international assessments on math and science,
the authors conclude that the higher skill levels of East Asian students than those in Latin America can
explain the much slower levels of growth in the latter region.

Similarly, Barro and Lee (2015) have developed measures of human capital that account for both the
quantity and the quality of schooling, combining average years of schooling and performance on
international student and adult skills assessments. Their results also find that high-quality schooling has
a significant impact on growth across countries.

Including skills when measuring human capital has important implications for the impact of education
on productivity. Rather than school progression and attainment alone, learning outcomes and skills are
increasingly used to measure the success of education systems, and disparities in skills across countries
have called attention to low-quality schooling in many countries. Figures from developed and
developing countries alike paint a worrisome picture. As many as 130 million primary school students
lack basic reading and writing skills, largely concentrated in developing countries (UNESCO 2012). A
survey of 24 OECD countries found that more than 20 percent of all adults have low proficiency in
literacy or numeracy despite the fact that nearly three-quarters of them have completed secondary
school or higher (Grotlüschen et al. 2016).1

In addition to addressing failures of systems to foster high levels of skills, it is important that education
and the labor market match up on the types of skills and qualifications necessary for boosting
productivity. The OECD estimates that approximately 30 percent of cross-country variation in aggregate
labor productivity can be explained by the level of skill used by workers in their jobs, meaning both
stronger proficiency and maximizing the use of those skills in the workplace are important for
productivity (OECD 2013). Additionally, skill mismatches are a worrying trend for labor productivity—
one-third of workers in OECD countries are over- or under-qualified for their positions. Recent studies
using the assessments of adult skills in OECD countries find that both mismatch in qualifications and in
actual skills lead to lower productivity across the economy due to inefficient allocation of talent across
firms (McGowan and Andrews 2015).

Together, these findings emphasize that skills, and not just schooling, are an important factor in
productivity. It is no longer sufficient to focus on increasing the number of years workers spend in
school, but instead policies aiming to improve human capital and productivity must focus on quality and
the relevance of skills learned.

Skills and Technology

The skills that are needed to best complement technology in the workplace are particularly relevant for
the economy today and into the future. While advances in technology would predict increases in
productivity, allowing workers and firms to produce more with less time and resources, productivity
growth in fact has been declining recently. The skills that can be automated by technology versus skills

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Low proficiency is classified as scoring at or below Level 1 on the PIAAC assessment of adult skills. For literacy,
this means not being able to comprehend and identify straightforward information in a multi-paragraph text. For
numeracy, low proficiency means not being able to work with numbers beyond counting, sorting and basic
arithmetic. 12.3 percent of all adults had low literacy and numeracy proficiency, 3.2 percent had just low literacy,
and 6.7 percent had low numeracy skills.

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that can complement technology and make workers more productive are one key area of interest
among many educationalists and economists alike.

For example, Brynjolfsson and McAfee in The Second Machine Age lay out evidence on which skills are
uniquely human and will improve productivity and innovation by working with technology, versus the
increasing list of skills that can be automated. Research on labor market trends since the mid-20th
century in high- and low-income countries alike shows that jobs which rely on skills classified as routine
are on the decline due to automation. This includes both manual tasks such as working on a factory
assembly line as well as cognitive tasks like accounting (Autor et al. 2001, Autor and Price 2013, Aedo et
al. 2013). In the U.S., for example, demand has been rising for interpersonal and analytical skills, skills
which complement technology but are difficult to automate (Figure 1). As digital technologies continue
to advance, a central question is how education systems can equip young people with skills that will
allow them to work with technology to increase productivity and growth (Winthrop and McGivney
2016).

Figure 1

History provides a useful example of the adaptation needed in skills development due to changes in
technology and the labor market. Goldin and Katz reviewed the U.S.’s 20th century response to changes
in the labor market in The Race Between Education and Technology and found that shifts in labor market
needs due to industrialization led to a massive increase in secondary school education all over the

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country. The literacy and numeracy skills gained by students in high school were crucial to improve their
productivity in both “white-collar” office jobs and “blue-collar” manual work. However, there was a lag,
with education and skills development taking time to catch up (Figure 2). This lag holds true for skills
development in today’s economy as well. Ultimately, Goldin and Katz argue that the lag that exists
between technological improvements and the development of matching skills can cause considerable
societal pain.

Figure 2

Changes in technology today are predicted to make the labor market and the jobs of the future
fundamentally different from the world of work today (World Economic Forum 2016). In order to
improve productivity, young people will need the right mix of skills to take advantage of the new
technologies. Strong essential skills like literacy, numeracy and academic knowledge are crucial, but
workers will also need to be flexible and adaptive, able to think critically to filter and analyze large
amounts of information, and will need strong interpersonal skills to collaborate and effectively
communicate with diverse groups of people.

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Recent work has shown this breadth of skills to be extremely important for labor market success. The
work of Nobel laureate James Heckman has shown that many skills developed through high-quality early
childhood development initiatives have a strong impact on later life outcomes. Recently, his work has
also compared adults who completed secondary school with those who instead dropped out of school
and passed a high school equivalency test. He found that school graduates have better employment
outcomes when compared to drop outs with similar cognitive skills. He attributes the gap to those
“character” skills that graduates either possess or obtain while in school that enables them to persevere
and finish school.

In the education and learning sciences literature, these sets of skills – for example, the ability to set
goals, to fail and try again, and to adapt strategies to achieve desired outcomes – are increasingly being
recognized as important underlying skills that enable not only academic success but also workplace
success. Additionally, 17 percent of employers surveyed around the world report difficulty in hiring due
to a lack of candidates with these skills, or so-called “workplace competencies” like communication and
collaboration skills (Manpower Group 2015). High-tech companies such as Google value skills like
learning agility and problem-solving over technical skills and expertise in content areas, and their hiring
practices reflect this shift away from formal qualifications (Friedman 2014).

Skills and Inequality

Around the world, gaps in schooling have been narrowing for generations, with more and more young
people and adults attending and completing formal education than ever. Examining their extensive
dataset on educational attainment of adults from the 19th century to today, Barro and Lee (2015) find
that faster rates of human capital accumulation in developing countries relative to advanced countries
helped to reduce the worldwide per-capita income gap. They note that while for some time the world
was divided into those with and without education, by 2040 most countries will achieve similar levels of
schooling. Other research finds that global gaps will persist much longer (Winthrop and McGivney 2014),
but undoubtedly schooling levels are rising in all regions.

However, despite increased access to schooling, deficiencies and lags in the quality and relevance of
education and skills needed to be successful in the future world of work are limiting the impact of the
new technologies on productivity and economic growth. They are also contributing to a rise in income
inequality. As Figure 1 shows, technology and automation have polarized the labor market by types of
skills demanded. Not only is the demand for interpersonal and analytical skills on the rise, but there has
also been growth in low-skill services jobs. In the U.S., for example, many middle-skill workers who
previously were employed in routine work have been forced into low-skill, low-wage employment, while
employment and wages for high-skill professional and managerial positions have grown for those at the
top of the skill distribution (Autor and Dorn 2013). Labor market polarization and unemployment due to
skills mismatch can lead to high levels of inequality, and according to the 2016 Global Risks Report,
unemployment and underemployment are the top risk for 31 countries (World Economic Forum 2016).

Skills for the Future

While for decades economists have looked to education as a source of growth and increasing
productivity, further research is needed on how to make the sector more productive in terms of the
relevant skills acquired. Technology and jobs are changing rapidly, and the skills needed to be successful
may be fundamentally different from those of the 20th century or the industrial revolution. Further

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research is needed on how an individual’s skills interact with technology to make them more productive.
Further research is also needed into how education systems can foster these skills at scale. While the
spread of access to schooling has been one of the most successful “going-to-scale” stories, quality has
varied widely and many children and youth are not learning even basic skills.

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