I was invited to give a keynote speech as part of a 10 speaker series as part of the celebration of the 75th year of CEPAL. I was invited with a specific title, which I pretty much stuck to, and which is the title of the attached longish essay that was the substance behind the speech (and which will by published in the CEPAL review along with the other essay).
The video of the speech is in this link, one main aspect of is a long and flattering introduction by the Executive Secretary of CEPAL, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, which, naturally, I would encourage everyone to watch.
The paper covered some old ground I have gone over many times (the fact that schooling has expanded massively but the quality of learning in schools varies massively across countries), goes over some old ground I have not revisited in a while (the “where has all the education gone” and “does learning to add up add up” papers about the lack of correlation of “schooling capital” growth and GDP per capita (or per worker).
It adds two new things.
One, drawing mainly on new cross-national data estimating a cardinal measure of learning of a typical enrolled youth, both in the World Bank’s Harmonized Test Scores and the new estimates of Gust, Hanushek and Woessmann 2023, I tried something that almost never works, which is to run a simple OLS regression on GDP per capita with schooling, average learning, and an interaction term. The interactive specification always made much more sense to me than a “horse race” of including schooling and learning separately was it seems that adding a worker with a given level of S should contribute more if they have more learning and conversely a higher level of learning should contribute more the more youth are getting it. Anyway, I was kind of surprised that simple regression gave sensible results (and robust across the two measures of learning, which is not so surprising given they are highly correlated).
The other new thing is some speculations on my part of both how the PISA-like learning estimates can be so low and why that probably matters for the contribution of schooled youth to output. The reason is that while these scores are a single number (e.g. Chile’s score on mathematics in PISA is X), this is a single number with (at least) two dimensions, like area is length times height. The two conceptual dimensions of an assessment score on a domain are “coverage” (e.g. across different sub-domains of mathematics) and “depth” (the extent to which the assessed individual have more than just a rote or purely procedural understanding). This in part helps understand “how can kids have attended 9 years of schooling and yet score so low?” if the assessment probes for depth of understanding whereas the child’s learning has just pushed through coverage and emphasized a merely rote, memorized, or procedural understanding.
The second aspect is that if schooling just emphasized a rote/memorized/procedural understanding this implies that when youth, once out of school, encounter a problem for which a conceptual understanding would help them produce better answers and solutions and judgments about concrete problems their schooling hasn’t really equipped them for this.
I want to make this last point because, as an economist who was worked on issues of education and development for a long time now I find that when economists say things like “a countries economic growth/level of productivity is associated with its scores on a PISA-like assessment of mathematics” we can be heard (caricatured) as saying three things I am not saying.
One, that “education” is, or has to be, instrumentally justified by its impact on economic measures only. No, of course not, education has lots of justifications and lots of (potential) positive impacts on human lives.
Two, that economists in pointing out a connection of economic contribution to a score on assessment therefore are “recommending” and certain type of approach to the process of teaching and learning because we economists are focused on test scores. Again, no, of course not. In particular, we economists are often accused of wanting “drill and kill” or “back to basics” approaches to education, but this is definitely not what I am emphasizing. I am emphasizing teaching and learning practices in schools that lead to the depth of conceptual understanding necessary to produce valued and use competencies in adults.
Three, that economists in pointing out a connection between, say, mathematics scores and economic output must think that lots of jobs require workers to use, say, algebra or trigonometry or calculus (and point out that is ridiculous). But again, no, of course not. Yes understanding mathematics per se is important for lots of careers and professions. But the main point is that lots of people have to reason their way to correct judgments when faced with new and non-routine situations and that this kind of in-context application of skills is a hugely important capability for youth to acquire. But this emphasizes more “depth” of understanding and ability to apply knowledge and skills than any memorized formula or factual information.