Human capital, education, achievement and learning

Abstract

This paper reviews the most important scientific and policy research in the area of human capital, education achievement and learning and discusses the need for a new nationally representative household panel for the United States to provide the research resources necessary to keep the United States at the forefront of scientific and policy research in this area. Excellent panel data incorporating recent advances in panel design and innovative measures are required for addressing the most important policy issues. The major household panels internationally all have large sections devoted to hu- man capital, education achievement and learning. Within the broad framework of human capital there is overwhelming evidence of the importance of skills or abili- ties to lifetime success, most obviously in earnings, but also in many other outcomes relevant to policy makers. Increasingly human capital has been linked to areas such as health outcomes, marriage, fertility, social cohesion, immigrant assimilation, en- trepreneurship and criminal behavior. This report discusses the need for a new na- tionally representative household panel for the United States to provide the research resources necessary to keep the United States at the forefront of scientific and policy research in the area of human capital, education achievementand learning. Section 2 discusses the most important current scientific and policy issues in this area. Section 3 assesses the need for a new household panel to address these issues. What infor- mation needs to be collected is discussed in Section 4, with a special emphasis on innovativemeasuresto push forwardthe research agenda.Finally, Section 5 provides some conclusions and suggested priorities.