Social Inequality

Investigations into the determinants of economic growth across countries and over time have shown unambiguously that investment in education permits rapid economic growth and improvements in productivity. Investment in education has been found to be a dependable tool for economic, social and political engineering. In the field of economics, seminal works on growth accounting (Barro,1991), Ojo and Oshikoya (1995), Berthelemy and Varoudakis (1996), to mention a few), all found that education broadly defined, exerts positive influence on the rate of economic growth. Primary and secondary education in particular, is known to exert strong and positive influence on the rate and pattern of growth. In its study of the growth performance of Asian countries titled The Asian Miracle, (1993), the World Bank found that growth in investment, human capital, population growth and relative income were the chief determinants of growth. But breaking human capital into its various components—primary school enrolment, secondary school enrolment and overall educational attainment—the Bank found that primary education was by far the largest single contributor to predicted growth rates (World Bank, P. 52). The study concluded that education is the main theme of the story of the differences between Sub-Saharan Africa and the East Asian high performers (World Bank, p.54). In their own study of Chinese Taipei, Berthelemy and Varoudakis found that overall, well-targeted education policy accounted for 9 per cent of the growth and 23 percent of productivity improvements posted from 1951 and 1991. Ojo and Oshikoya found similar evidence in a cross-section study of selected African countries. Thus the case for education as a mover of growth and improvements in productivity cannot be overstated.
    In terms of social engineering, education has been found to be a major instrument for social mobility by reducing inequality in societies through its capacity to level the playing field for all...