Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling : Defining A New Macro Measure of Education

Filmer, Deon ; Rogers, Halsey ; Angrist, Noam ; Sabarwal, Shwetlena

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT;    LEARNING;    YEARS OF SCHOOLING;    HUMAN CAPITAL;    RETURNS TO EDUCATION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8591
RP-ID  :  WPS8591

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The standard summary metric ofeducation-based human capital used in macro analyses—theaverage number of years of schooling in a population—isbased only on quantity. But ignoring schooling quality turnsout to be a major omission. As recent research shows,students in different countries who have completed the samenumber of years of school often have vastly differentlearning outcomes. This paper therefore proposes a newsummary measure, Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling(LAYS), that combines quantity and quality of schooling intoa single easy-to-understand metric of progress. Thecross-country comparisons produced by this measure arerobust to different ways of adjusting for learning (forexample, by using different international assessments ordifferent summary learning indicators), and the assumptionsand implications of LAYS are consistent with other evidence,including other approaches to quality adjustment. The paperargues that (1) LAYS improves on the standard metric,because it is a better predictor of important outcomes, andit improves incentives for policymakers; and (2) its virtuesof simplicity and transparency make it a good candidatesummary measure of education.