1986 · 41 citations · 0 references
Social SciencesComparative EducationEconomicsDevelopment EconomicsEconomic DevelopmentLabor EconomicsHuman CapitalHuman Capital DevelopmentHuman Resource DevelopmentPopulation GrowthEducational Attainment Of WorkersEnrollmentInternational Human Resource DevelopmentRegional Human Capital Gaps
The most commonly used indicator of human resource development is the enrollment ratio for different levels of schooling. The paper argues that a more accurate indicator in this respect, although more difficult to obtain, is the educational attainment of the labor force. Therefore, such data have been collected mainly from the 1980 round of censuses for nearly 100 countries and summarized into regional indices of human resource development. One such index, the mean years of schooling embodied in the labor force, shows significant differences in the human capital stock between world regions, as well as between countries within a given region. Such differences in human capital endowments could be further used to explain variations in economic growth patterns across countries, or to form the basis for assessing relative priorities in educational investment.