Schooling environment and students’ performance: an empirical analysis at aggregate level.

Abstract

Empirical research on human capital over the last few decades has focused on multiple kinds of measures, incorporating resources, student achievement, school attainment and others. This paper provides support for the positive relationship between GDP per capita growth and the quality of the labor force, proxied by international student test scores, closely following the assumptions and procedures of Hanushek and Kimko (2000), by using modern data. The main results coincide with Hanushek and Kimko (2000), while there is variation in others. Specifically, the baseline cross-sectional regression of growth, which includes the variables of the initial income, the parental education (or schooling quantity), the population growth rate and the labor force (or schooling) quality of different countries is estimated by using an observed and a predicted (or augmented) sample of countries. While the outcomes of the former show significance of schooling quality over quantity, the latter concludes with the importance of high quality, which should accompany the negative direct effects of quantity on growth. Other conclusions refer to the efficiency of the teacher salaries on student performance and the role of educational resources. Moreover, the cross-sectional models of growth seem robust when East and South East Asian high performing countries are excluded. Finally, the growth and human capital quality relationship is estimated in a more direct framework, by using a set of panel regressions. The results in this case are similar to the cross-sectional counterparts, although different specifications may have to be taken into consideration.