Education for all: An unfinished revolution

Daedalus

Volumn 131, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 84-95

  Bloom, David E ^a   Cohen, Joel E ^b  

^a Haryard School of Public Health   (United States)

^b ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 32744467666     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Just this year, the World Bank announced a new effort to ensure that all children would receive an elementary education. At the same time, officials acknowledged that they would probably not reach this goal by the target date of 2015.
2. UNESCO, Compendium of Statistics on Illiteracy, 1990 ed. (Paris: UNESCO Office of Statistics, 1990);
3. Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, "International measures of schooling years and schooling quality," American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 86 (2) (1996): 218-223;
4. Task Force on Higher Education and Society, Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000).
5. UNESCO/OECD World Indicators Programme, Investing iii Education: Analysis of the 1999 World Education Indicators (Paris: OECD, 2000).
6. UNESCO, World Education Report (Paris: UNESCO, 2000).
7. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2001 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2001).
8. UNESCO, Education for All 2000 Assessment Statistical Document, 29, 33
9. Education for All Assessment Statistical Document.
10. UNESCO online database.
11. United Nations, World Population Prospects, 2000 rev.
12. Each of these figures is a gross enrollment rate - that is, the ratio of the number of students enrolled in secondary school to the number of children in the population who are in the age group normally expected to be enrolled in secondary school. Children counted in the numerator may be older than the normal ages for secondary school because they started school late or because they had to repeat one or more years of schooling. A gross enrollment rate, therefore, may exaggerate or overstate the fraction of children of secondary school age who are enrolled in secondary school. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, "Gross enrollment ratios by level of education," zooi; available at .
13. UNESCO, "Education for All," 2001; available at .
14. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Lost Man (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 116.
15. We recognize, of course, that a well-educated population is not a guaranteed barrier to the power of dictators. The most notable exception is that of Nazi Germany.
16. Gene Sperling, "Educating the World," New York Times, 22 November 2001;
17. George Psacharopoulos, "A reply to Bennell," World Development 24(1996): 201.
18. David Bloom and David Canning, "Cumulative Causality. Economic Growth, and the Demographic Transition," in Nancy Birdsall, Allen C. Kelley, and Steven W. Sinding, eds., Population Matters: Demographic Change, Econoinic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World (New York: Oxford, 2001), 165-197.
19. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999), 42-43.
20. Authors' calculations based on data from Task Force on Higher Education, Higher Education in Developing Countries.
21. Christopher Marquis, "Cuba Leads Latin America in Primary Education, Study Finds," New York Times, 14 December zooi, A22;
22. Task Force on Education, Equity, and Economic Competitiveness in Latin America & the Caribbean, Lagging Beliind:A Report Card on Education in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas, Inter-American Dialogue, November 2001).
23. Gene Sperling, "Toward Universal Education: Making a Promise and Keeping It," Foreign Affairs So (s) (September/October 2001): 7-13.
24. If we divide these estimates by the estimated number of children of primary school age who were not in primary school in 1998, namely, 113 million (uNEsco, Education for All 2000 Assessnent Statistical Document, 9), we get a cost of $62 to $8, per child per year.
25. Shantayanan Devarajan, MargaretJ. Miller, and Eric V. Swanson, "Goals for Development: History, Prospects, and Costs," World Bank Working Paper 2819 (April 2002): 16, 22-26.
26. UNESCO/OECD, Investing in Education.
27. P. Duraisamy, Estelle James, Julia Lane, and Jee-Peng Tan, "Is there a Quantity-Quality Tradeoff as Enrollments Increase? Evidence from Tamil Nadu, India," Policy Research Workzag Paper (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1997).
28. National Research Council, Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999).
29. Sperling, "Toward Universal Education," 7-13.
30. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the American Academy's UBASE project, which is underwritten by the Hewlett Foundation, John Reed, the Golden Family Foundation, Paul Zuckerman, an anonymous donor, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. JEC acknowledges the support of National Science Foundation grant DEB 9981552 and the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. William T. Golden during this work. Ines Aguerrondo, Leslie Berlowitz, Ariel Dorfman, George Ingram, Kishore Mahbubani, Martin Maim, Kenneth Prewitt, Mamphela Ramphele, Larry Rosenberg, Bruce Scott, Adele Simmons, Stephen Sinding, and Paul Zuckerman provided helpful comments on and discussion of earlier drafts.