Despite evidence for the substantial benefits of school readiness among children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), most lack access to any pre-primary education at all, let alone high-quality preprimary education. In this article, we discuss obstacles and example of solutions to providing universal access to "high-quality"…

Household income shocks in developing countries are known to have an impact on the education investments for children. In this paper, we explore the effects of various income and expenditure shocks on educational investment and cognitive outcomes of children using three rounds of household-level panel data from Young Lives survey conducted in two…

Studies in education over the past decade highlight the hijacking of educational agendas by neoliberal rationalities and logics. I illustrate these processes in relation to transnational campaigns for girls' education, where the purpose of "education" is reduced to producing wage-based labor and an accumulation of skills that enhance…

International education is seen as an effective form of soft power. This article reviews one of history's largest and most ambitious attempts to achieve global influence through university education, and to reshape the world--the Soviet university aid program, 1956-91. Drawing on existing research and Soviet archival materials, we lay out and…

We evaluate the contribution of investment on education to Sri Lanka's economic growth during the period 1959-2008. Physical capital, economic policy changes and the ethnic war are also evaluated due to their substantial importance. This study uses a framework encompassing both the neoclassical and endogenous growth model. The impact of education…

The economic value of investment in education has typically been measured by its rate of return, frequently estimated by the internal rate of return or the earning function approach. Given the importance of the rate of return estimates for individuals and countries, especially developing countries, in making decision on educational investment, we…

The benefits of bilingual education for a disadvantaged indigenous population as an investment in human capital are significant. Students of bilingual schools in Guatemala have higher attendance and promotion rates, and lower repetition and dropout rates. Bilingual students receive higher scores on all subject matters, including mastery of…

In the United States, developing "human capital" for both economic and social benefit is an idea as old as the nation itself and led to the emergence of world's first mass higher education system. Now most other nations are racing to expand access to universities and colleges and to expand their role in society. Higher education is…

Presents evidence concerning the rate of return to investment in education in 32 countries. The emerging pattern shows declining returns through time, viewed in the context of alternative theories about the education-earnings relationship. The evidence supports a human capital model and continued expansion of education in developing countries.…

The cost of education to a country consists of total public education expenditures, total direct private cost, and total indirect private cost measured in terms of foregone earnings; improperly estimated educational costs focus only on government education expenditures. Considerable progress has been made in conceptual understanding of educational…

Discusses problems in meeting the goal of education for all in developing countries. Includes lack of teachers and instructional material. Describes financial requirements, trends in resource allocation, and external aid for primary education. Suggests external donors concentrate on support for building national capacity, weighting funding for…

This paper hypothesizes that the cost differential between primary school and middle or secondary schooling will affect household decisions to invest in any one schooling level in Ghana. Human capital investment is usually modeled in an intertemporal optimization framework in which households or individuals maximize the present value of life-time…

During the period from 1949 to 1984, industry's share in the national economy of the Peoples' Republic of China rose from 30 percent to 60 percent. Despite raising literacy over the same period from 20 percent to over 75 percent, the Chinese educational system has failed to keep pace with the economy's rapidly expanding need for trained…

Educational policy in three southern African countries plus the "independent" South African homelands is reviewed in this paper. First, an introduction discusses how the significance of education as a factor in national development became an issue of growing concern in the 1960's (during the move toward independence), but also how…

Cost and benefits of education are studied by this collection of eight papers by economists in relation to issues of the genetic component of variation in intelligence, differences between integration and desegregation, and diminishing returns in educational expenditures. Silver's paper challenges the idea that better schools cannot be obtained by…