I can see now where you are getting your idea but that's a quantitative measure only which does not consider quality of education. The reason that 1970s Europe was better educated than Brazil or Latin America today is because of the substandard education so many will get from public secondary school and that's where their education stops. Enrollment ratio in university also doesn't say much about graduation rates. What surprised me after living in Europe and that you will not find nearly as often in Latin America, is just how well educated someone is who only attended secondary school.
Your claim also included a question about why these countries are still poor. Brazil is not competing with the France of the 1970s.
> Your claim also included a question about why these countries are still poor. Brazil is not competing with the France of the 1970s.
I made no such claim. I said that education was a consequence of economic growth, not vice versa. That is all. If you do a regression of changes in education over time versus changes in economic growth there is no trend. Changes in education do not cause changes in economic growth.
That Brazil is not competing with 1970s France is irrelevant to my claim. Education is a consequence rather than a cause of growth.
Then I'm very confused by what you originally wrote:
> Large parts of Africa and almost all of Latin America are more highly educated now than 1970s Europe and poorer than it.
Brazil's economic growth has been between 5% and 10% since the 1970s. That's pretty respectable. So how can you claim which is the causation?
> I said that education was a consequence of economic growth, not vice versa.
> The most obvious example of economic growth not being associated with education is post Deng Xiaoping China. The huge majority had primary school education at best and the economy just kept growing and growing.
From your own source, China also has a greater proportion of the populace in third level education than France did in 1970. In fact, the chart for China looks very similar to Brazil. And with both countries "the economy just kept growing and growing."
> If you do a regression of changes in education over time versus changes in economic growth there is no trend.
Source? Where can we find that analysis?
> That Brazil is not competing with 1970s France is irrelevant to my claim. Education is a consequence rather than a cause of growth.
You don't have to look at relative education levels to understand if a competitive advantage in education leads to growth? It would be naive to claim any change in education will result in economic growth. So hopefully what we are talking about here is changes in education that lead to one country being ahead in education in some qualitative measures. At which point you would be able to understand whether or not being ahead of another country in education results in growth.
> From your own source, China also has a greater proportion of the populace in third level education than France did in 1970. In fact, the chart for China looks very similar to Brazil.
Yes, China got rich so it started spending money on education. That’s my point. An educated populace is a consequence of a rich one, not a cause.
> Does Schooling Cause Growth or the Other Way Around?
> Barro (1991) and others find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries, with each additional year of 1960 enrollment associated with about .6% per year faster growth in per capita GDP from 1960 to 1990. In a model with finite-lived individuals who choose schooling, schooling can influence growth, but also faster technology-driven growth can induce more schooling by raising the effective rate of return on investment in schooling. We consider a variety of evidence to determine the strength of these channels, with two main findings. First, faster-growing countries have at most modestly flatter cross-sectional experience-earnings profiles, consistent with a minority role for the channel from schooling to growth. Second, we calibrate the model using evidence from the labor literature and employ UNESCO attainment data to construct schooling going back well before 1960.
> We find the channel from schooling to growth to be too weak to generate even half of Barro's coefficient under a range of plausible parameter values. The reverse channel from expected growth to schooling, in contrast, is capable of explaining the empirical relationship. We conclude that the evidence favors a dominant role for the reverse channel from growth to schooling.
That study is outdated, artificially recreates some of the educational data, and does not address two keys points I made that you skipped over: 1. If you are always behind other countries in education it of course will not offer as much of a competitive advantage. 2. Quantity of education is an almost useless measure. It's quality of education that should be interesting in terms of driving economic growth.
Even their conclusion "the evidence favors..." is far less strong than your insistence that growth is definitely the causation. This is exactly why I always ask for sources.
From a more recent study that includes some meta-analysis:
> The relationship between cognitive skills and economic growth has now been demonstrated in a range of studies. As reviewed in Hanushek and Woessmann (2008), these studies employ measures of cognitive skills that draw upon the international testing of PISA and of TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) (along with earlier versions of these). The uniform result is that the international achievement measures provide an accurate measure of the skills of the labour force in different countries and that these skills are closely tied to economic outcomes. [1]
> Second, to tackle the most obvious reverse-causality issues, Hanushek and Woessmann (2009) separate the timing of the analysis by estimating the effect of scores on tests conducted until the early 1980s on economic growth in 1980-2000. In this analysis, available for a smaller sample of countries only, test scores pre-date the growth period. The estimate shows a significant positive effect that is about twice as large as the coefficient used in the simulations here. In addition, reverse causality from growth to test scores is also unlikely because additional resource in the school system (which might become affordable with increased growth) do not relate systematically to improved test scores (e.g. Hanushek, 2002). [1]
Before you get too excited that the study focuses on test scores, rather than education, I recommend you read the study.
By now it's clear to me that you're operating on confirmation bias for a personal theory you favor rather than having evaluated all of the available and most recent studies. You're working only to prove yourself right and not putting effort into proving yourself wrong. So I'm going to stop here.
Your claim also included a question about why these countries are still poor. Brazil is not competing with the France of the 1970s.