people and planet

7
variance in life expectancy at different education levels,
even in high income countries, the change to overall life
expectancy would be marginal in most regions due to the
short time horizon and modest increases in a population
with a given level of educational attainment. Even in
sub-Saharan Africa, the cohort that would benefit from
universal secondary education will not have reached
ages of high mortality even by 2050. Indeed, robust
studies highlighting the strong impact of education
on life expectancy have used cohorts in high income
countries born in the 1940s (Lager and Torssander, 2012),
underlining the long time-frame needed to demonstrate
an education effect on life expectancy.
EDUCATION CAN CHANGE THE COURSE
OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN POOR
COUNTRIES
The economic effects of education have been among
the most widely studied (Krueger and Lindahl, 2001). Of
particular interest in connection with the SDGs is the role
of education in increasing aggregate economic growth
and reducing extreme poverty.
FIGURE 7.3:
Achieving the SDG education target would save millions of
children’s lives
Under-5 mortality rates in the ‘trend’, ‘low’ and ‘SDG 4.1’ scenarios, by
region, 2030 and 2050
Deaths of children under 5 for every 1,000 live births
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Sub-Saharan Africa
Southern Asia
Caucasus/C. Asia
Northern Africa/W. Asia
Source: Barakat et al. (2016).
Trend scenario: education expanding at past trends
Low scenario: universal lower secondary completion by 2030
SDG 4.1 scenario: universal upper secondary completion by 2030
2030
Eastern/South-east. Asia
Latin America/Caribbean
Europe/N. America
Sub-Saharan Africa
Southern Asia
Caucasus/C. Asia
Northern Africa/W. Asia
2050
Eastern/South-east. Asia
Latin America/Caribbean
Europe/N. America
Economic growth gains can be enormous in
low income countries
Improvement in human capital is assumed to have two
distinct effects on income per capita. First, it increases
labour productivity. Second, it spurs technological
development and adoption, which in turn increases the
productivity of all factors of production.
Yet, as with health effects, the effects of education on
the economy take time to materialize. Young people who
benefit from education expansion in the next 15 years
need to enter the labour force in significant numbers
before their additional human capital can make an
impact. This will occur long after 2030. In middle income
countries, the additional growth from achieving universal
secondary education by 2030 would likely be small,
because many of these countries already have relatively
high and increasing levels of participation in secondary
education – even under the trend scenario.
In low income countries, though, universalizing upper
secondary completion would lead to an increase in per
capita income of 75% by 2050. Universal lower secondary
completion would account for about half of the gain.
However, this again understates the contribution of
education expansion, as significant education growth is
expected in the baseline trend scenario.
Expanding education can have a drastic effect on
poverty reduction
To estimate the impact of increased educational
attainment on poverty reduction as achieved through
national economic growth, assumptions are necessary
on how sensitive poverty rates are to growth rates
(Ravallion, 2012).
While accelerated education expansion can make
a sizeable contribution to overall growth, meeting
target 4.1 might not contribute much to eliminating
extreme poverty. In the poorest countries, however,
achieving universal secondary education by 2030
could bring poverty elimination forward by 10 years,
even if it is insufficient to eliminate extreme poverty
altogether by 2030. In particular, the poverty headcount
rate in low income countries – the proportion of the
population living below the poverty line of US$1.25 at
2005 purchasing power parity – would be 24% in the
SDG 4.1 scenario instead of 28% in the trend scenario
by 2030, and 2% instead of 9% by 2050 (Figure 7.4).
With 875 million people expected to be living in low
income countries in 2050 under the SDG scenario this
would correspond to more than 60 million fewer million
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CHAPTER 7 | PROJECTIONS: FORECASTING THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION EXPANSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES