Nber Working Paper Series the Effects of Education Quality on Income Growth and Mortality Decline

Previous work shows that higher levels of education quality (as measured by international student achievement tests) increases growth rates of national income. This paper begins by confirming those findings in an analysis involving more countries over more time with additional controls. We then use the panel structure of our data to assess whether the mechanism by which education quality appears to improve per capita income levels is through shifting the level of the production function (probably not), through increasing the impact of an additional year of education (probably not), or through increasing a country's rate of technological progress (very likely). Mortality rates complement income levels as indicators of national well-being and we extend our panel models to show that improved education quality increases the rate of decline in infant mortality. Throughout the analysis, we find a stronger impact of education quality and of years of schooling in open than in closed economies. Eliot A. Jamison Origo, Inc. 153 Kearny St., Suite 401 San Francisco, CA 94108 [email protected] Dean T. Jamison University of California, San Francisco 50 Beale St., Suite 1200 San Francisco, CA 94105 [email protected] Eric A. Hanushek Stanford University Hoover Institution Stanford, CA 94305-6010 and NBER [email protected] THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION QUALITY ON INCOME GROWTH AND MORTALITY DECLINE by Eliot A. Jamison, Dean T. Jamison, and Eric A. Hanushek