Research, Education and Economic Growth


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Stanford economist and his collaborators have documented how countries whose elementary and secondary school students displayed more knowledge of math and science tended to have higher rates of economic growth. Based on this, they have suggested that any reasonable investment that actually increases student achievement will ultimately increase productivity to the point that education becomes essentially free -- paid for by income the nation would not have with a lower skilled workforce. The research shows that on average, those countries with low economic growth tend to score lower on intelligence measures, ceteris paribus. Former US Secretary of Treasury has endorsed this conclusion. Former US Secretary of State said, “America's failure to educate is affecting its national security.” Hanushek further supports pre-school programs, because they have been shown to increase educational achievement.

This article reviews some of the literature on preschool programs, other programs to increase student achievement, and the need for more and better research.

Preschool programs
Valuable documentation of the value of preschool involves the “.” This intervention ran from 1962 to 1967, during which period 123 children ages 3 and 4 were randomly assigned to either a treatment (58 children) or a control (65 children) group. It became a prototype for the much larger “Head Start” program. Researchers followed up with the Perry Preschool participants at age 27 and found that they had spent 1.3 fewer years on average in special education, had a 44% higher high school graduation rate (66% vs. 45%), and had a much lower proportion of out-of-wedlock births (57% vs. 83%). At age 40, the Perry Preschool group was 46% less likely to have been incarcerated (28% vs. 52%), 33% lower arrest rate for violent crimes (32% vs. 48%), 42% higher median monthly income ($1,856 vs. $1,308), and 26% less likely to have received government assistance (e.g. welfare, food stamps) in the previous ten years (59% vs. 80%). Meanwhile, evaluations of the much larger “” program have failed to produce an academic or political consensus about the effectiveness of the program.
 * For supportive research, see, e.g., Deming (2009).
 * For equivocal results, see, e.g., Barnett and Hustedt (2005).
 * For research claiming essentially not impact, see, e.g., Bernardy (2012); see also Armor and Sousa (2014).

More research is needed to understand the differences: If we can identify which versions of “Head Start” were more effective, we may be able to improve the effectiveness of that program overall.

Other programs to increase student achievement
Many programs claim to be able to help keep children in school, learning, and out of trouble. One such program in Kansas City is “Youth Ambassadors”, which pays at-risk youth minimum wage to do useful things after school and on weekends, when they would otherwise be most likely to get into trouble. There are many other programs like this that could and should be studied: If we can keep the youth occupied with productive, educational activities, we can increase the knowledge they will be able to use as adults while simultaneously reducing their involvement in all kinds of self-destructive, antisocial and criminal behaviors.

GDPperCap-Hoover-WWII.svg

Need for more and better research
The real average annual income ( per capita, adjusted for inflation) in the US has averaged over 2% per year increase since, adjusted for ; see the accompanying figure. If we spend, say, 10% of that increase in productivity on expanding research into programs that improve educational achievement -- and then on expanding funding of the better programs -- Hanushek's results suggest that ten or twenty years later, we will start having a substantially higher rate of economic growth, to the point that we can ultimately pay for our entire education system from income we would not have without that increase in research and the resulting improvements in the quality of education. Of course, that assumes other things are equal -- and we know they won't be. However, that uncertainty should not deter us from making investments like this in understanding which educational innovations work best and replicating them, while continuing to monitor the expanded programs to continue improving our understanding of what works.