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Title: Education Quality and Development Accounting

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This paper measures the role of quality-adjusted years of schooling in accounting for cross-country output per worker differences. While data on years of schooling are readily available, data on education quality are not. I use the returns to schooling of foreign-educated immigrants in the U.S. to measure the education quality of their birth country. Immigrants from developed countries earn higher returns than do immigrants from developing countries. I show how to incorporate this measure of education quality into an otherwise standard development accounting exercise. The main result is that cross-country differences in education quality are roughly as important as cross-country differences in years of schooling in accounting for output per worker differences, raising the total contribution of education from 10% to 20% of output per worker differences.

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Authors: Schoellman, Todd

Periodical (Full): Review of Economic Studies

Issue: 1

Volume: 79

Pages: 388-417

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Migration and Immigration, Other

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