Development Goal: Universal Basic Skills
Because educational performance is a key determinant of prosperity, the primary development goal should be that all youths around the world achieve at least basic skills. The importance of such a goal of universal basic skills for inclusive world development would be immense.
Based on the relationship between educational performance and economic growth, we can perform projections of the future growth paths of the economy with given and improved educational performance. The thus calculated economic costs of low educational performance in terms of foregone future growth in developing countries are stunning. In the projections, the economic gains from improving the current quality of schools prove substantially larger than those from expanding enrollment at the current quality.
Contributions that summarize the development goal of "Universal Basic Skills":
Teach the World: Why the UN Sustainable Development Goals Should Focus on Education (with E.A. Hanushek). foreignaffairs.com, 20.8.2015
Teach All Young People Universal Basic Skills by 2030 – It Will Give Huge Boost to GDP (with E.A. Hanushek). The Conversation UK, 18.5.2015
Non-technical contribution:
Universal Basic Skills Should Become the Primary Development Goal (with E.A. Hanushek). VOX, 24.5.2015
Here you can learn more about my research on this topic.
We report the projections of costs of low educational performance in developing countries in the following report:
Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain (with E.A. Hanushek). Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2015
Rick and I discuss the high cost of low educational performance back in 2010:
