Abstract
This paper is an outgrowth of the writer’s exploration of economic growth in the United States.1 I shall first indicate the general approach and results of the study as a whole, and then proceed to detailed discussion and some further development of the relationship of education to growth in the United States and Europe.2
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Edward F. Denison, The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us, Supplementary Paper No. 13, Committee for Economic Development, New York, January 1962. Most of the summary in Section 1 of this paper is taken, almost verbatim, from ‘United States Economic Growth’, The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, April 1962. See also ‘Education, Economic Growth, and Gaps in Information’, The Journal of Political Economy, October 1962, Part 2, and ‘How to Raise the High-Employment Growth Rate by One Percentage Point’, The American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May 1962.
Let me note at the outset that this paper describes only the writer’s approach to measurement and results. It is not a review of research in the United States on the economic costs and consequences of education, to which a number of investigators have made important contributions based on various approaches. For such a review see Alice M. Rivlin, ‘Research in the Economics of Higher Education: Progress and Problems’ and other papers in Selma J. Mushkin’s (ed.). Economics of Higher Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, 1962. See also the introduction by T. W. Schultz to Part 2 of the October 1962 issue of The Journal of Political Economy.
Moses Abramovitz, ‘ Economic Growth in the United States, a Review Article’, American Economic Review, September 1962, pp. 770–71.
Theodore W. Schultz has prepared estimates (derived in part from work by Clarence D. Long) for both the labour force and the total population, both aged 18–64, of the average number of years, and of ‘equivalent years’ based on adjustment of days of school attendance to the 1940 level (Theodore W. Schultz, ‘Rise in the Capital Stock Represented by Education in the United States, 1900–57’, in Selma Mushkin (ed.), Economics of Higher Education, (op. cit.) Tables 1 and 2, pp. 96–7) His estimates yield percentage changes in the number of ‘equivalent 1940 years of schooling completed per person’ that are very similar for the labour force age 18–64 and the total population age 18–64 in all periods, and from 1910 to 1950 both are close to my estimates of the change in the average number of days per person for males 25 and over as given above in Column (4) of Table 4. However, his estimates imply a somewhat smaller increase in years per person, and larger increase in number of days of school attended per year of school completed, than do mine in the period before 1930. This would not appreciably affect my estimate of the contribution of education to growth. He also shows a larger increase in years and hence in equivalent years, from 1950 to 1957. I don’t know whether these differences derive from estimating procedure or the universe covered. Professor Schultz does not show distributions by level of education such as are required to carry out my procedure for estimating the contribution of education to growth.
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© 1966 International Economic Association
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Denison, E.F. (1966). Measuring the Contribution of Education to Economic Growth. In: Robinson, E.A.G., Vaizey, J.E. (eds) The Economics of Education. International Economic Association Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08464-7_6
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