The Most Educated (News and Research 313)

25 Most Educated Countries In the World | Education can also increase incomes. According to the World Bank, the economic returns on average of a tertiary education is a 17% increase in earnings compared to a 10% increase for primary education and a 7% increase for a secondary education… the list…

America risks fumbling its chance to help schoolchildren catch up | In the United States, since the start of the pandemic, scores in reading and math have dropped back to levels of 20 years ago.

Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Fall 2022: Social Protection for Recovery | …Human capital losses in Ukraine from disrupted schooling alone are estimated to be on the order of $90 billion—almost as much as the losses in physical capital to date…

Is Social Protection a Luxury Good? | The claim that social protection is a luxury good has been influential. The paper tests the “luxury good hypothesis” using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995. While the mean income share devoted to social protection rises with income, this is attributable to multiple confounders, including relative prices, weak governance in low-income countries and access to information-communication technologies. Controlling for these, social protection is not a luxury good.

Protect Incomes or Protect Jobs? The Role of Social Policies in Post-Pandemic Recovery | This paper examines the effectiveness of income protection and job protection policies for the post-pandemic economic recovery of the second half of 2020 through 2021. It is based on a new data set of the budgets of social protection programs implemented as a part of the pandemic stimulus package in 154 countries. The empirical analysis shows that, in the short run, higher expenditure on job protection measures is associated with more robust gross domestic product growth, increased employment, and decreased inactivity and poverty rates compared to the expansion of income protection programs.

Explaining the Evolution of Job Tenure in Europe, 1995–2020 | Using data from Eurostat Labor Force Surveys of 29 countries from 1995 to 2020 and applying an age-period-cohort decomposition to analyze changes in tenure for specific birth cohorts, this paper shows that tenure has shrunk for cohorts born in more recent years. The estimations demonstrate that, over time, the likelihood of having a medium- or long-term job decreased and holding a short-term job increased. The paper also finds that stricter job protection legislation appears to decrease the probability of holding a short-term job, and higher trade openness and ICT-related technological change are correlated with an increase of that probability.

Job Tenure and Structural Change in the Transition Economies of Europe | This paper uses labor force survey data for 1995–2020 to analyze the dynamics of job tenure in seven transition economies of Europe and a comparator country (Türkiye). The country-specific age-period-cohort decomposition demonstrates that, except in Albania, the job tenure of the cohort of workers entering the labor market in the 2000s is four to nine years shorter than that of workers who started working in the 1970s. This difference is at least twice as large as the difference in job tenure observed among workers from the same cohorts in European Union countries.

Electoral Cycles and Public Spending during the Pandemic | This paper uses a newly assembled data set on various types of social protection spending in 154 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 to analyze the effect of the electoral cycle on the size and composition of the social protection stimulus budget. The analysis shows that the longer is the time since the last election in a country—and thus the sooner the next election date—the larger is the share of the social protection pandemic budget allocated to social assistance and income protection and the lower is the share allocated to job retention schemes.

World Bank, French development agency finance Georgia’s new human capital programme | A human capital programme designed to unlock Georgia’s growth potential through investments in health, education and social protection has been launched in the country, the World Bank announced on Tuesday. “This is the largest World Bank investment ever extended to Georgia during the three decades of partnership, and the bank’s first cross-sectorial operation comprehensively targeting three critical areas of human development”, the bank said.

Georgia in World Bank’s Human Capital Review | The World Bank published a new Human Capital Review on Georgia, a report which takes a look at Georgia’s human capital — the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by its population viewed in terms of overall value or cost to the country. The report is released as part of the World Bank’s Human Capital Project (HCP), which is a “global effort to accelerate more and better investments in people for greater equity and economic growth.”

Korea Makes National Assessment Available for All Schools | President Yoon Suk-yeol says he will allow all schools to participate in the National Assessment of Education Achievement, amid a sharp increase in the number of students failing to meet English and math standards. Under the previous government, Korea shifted from requiring all students to take the exam in middle and high school to administering it on a sample basis. While the results are not reported at the individual student level, they are considered an accurate barometer of student learning nationally. The new policy gives schools the option of testing all students and using the results to identify which students need support.

New South Wales to Introduce Aboriginal Language Course

Comparable Estimates of Returns to Education for the World. Jobs Flagship presentation. World Bank. October 20, 2022 (ppt) https://hpatrinos.com/returns-to-education/