Learning quality, its inequality and sustainable development: evidence from global learning data

Abstract

When studies investigate the impact of average schooling or learning scores on economic development, they rarely focus on the effect of inequality in learning quality on economic development. Human capital is defined as inclusive sources combining citizens’ knowledge and treatment skills. This study uses global learning data to investigate a novel effect of the inequality of reading, math, and science learning scores on economic development and energy selection based on links between and within countries. We found that reducing learning outcome inequality among secondary students is crucial for improving economic development from both short-term and long-term perspectives. Moreover, the positive association between students' learning quality and economic development is confirmed. Compared to the within-country effect, the greater between-country effect of the relationship between learning quality and economic development is confirmed, showing that expectations of the between-country effect might overestimate the favorable effect of education on economic development. On the contrary, the findings show that population learning inequality is less likely to affect national attitudes toward nuclear electricity generation or renewable energy adoption. The insightful policy implications suggest that policy makers should consider reducing learning outcome inequality among students and improving the within-country relationship between education and economic development.