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The Impact of Education on Economic and Social Outcomes: An Overview of Recent Advances in Economics

This paper surveys recent advances in our understanding of the consequences of human capital for individual and social outcomes. Particular attention is given to recent developments in the economics discipline. Over the past 10 to 15 years there has been a resurgence of interest among economists in education and human capital. Considerable progress has been made on several fronts. This paper focuses on what I regard as the most important advance in knowledge – that of obtaining credible estimates of the causal influence of education on individual and social outcomes. Distinguishing between correlation and causation has been a major challenge in this area for some time. As a consequence, the substantial recent progress in this area represents an important achievement. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that substantial research effort has also devoted to several other issues relating to education and human capital. These include the consequences of changes in the intensity of resources devoted to schooling through such factors as class size and teacher training and remuneration, the implications of greater school choice and increased competition among schools, the role and implications of various forms of testing of students, and the significance of peer effects. Rather than providing a brief overview of recent research on all of these topics, I choose to focus on the central issue of the causal effect of education on individual and social outcomes. The paper is organized as follows. The next section provides brief overviews of the leading theories that seek to explain the linkages between human capital formation and labour market and social outcomes. Although the treatment of these theories is necessarily brief and simplified, this section provides useful background for the main parts of the paper. The remaining sections deal with empirical evidence on the relationship between human capital and individual and social outcomes. Section 3 discusses the challenges that arise in obtaining credible estimates of the causal impacts of education on private outcomes such as employment and labour market earnings. Although this task may seem to be straightforward, it has in fact represented a major challenge to empirical research for several decades. Important advances have recently been made in this area, and these are described in this section. The fourth section surveys recent advances in estimating the non-market and social benefits of education-2 impacts on outcomes such as greater civic participation, improved health, and reduced criminal activity. As is the case for …