The Effects of Education on the Development of Countries

Since the end of the Second World War, education has played an increasingly important role in the development of countries, especially in the economic, sociological and political aspects. This trend, however, can be strongly proved by Japan. According to the study by Hood (2001), through Japan’s second education reform, Japan's modernization was greatly accelerated, which led Japan to become one of the world powers. There may be a variety of related factors leading to the development of Japan, but the primary cause is education. This essay will state how education promotes politics, the economy and society; especially illustrate how education has a great influence on increasing income, reducing poverty, declining fertility, improving health status and influencing policies and people’s enthusiasm in participating politics.

The effects education has on the economy can be specific to increasing income, which can spur the economic growth. First, according to research by Case (2006), people with higher education can receive a higher income. In both developing and developed countries, better educated workers earn higher wages on average than less educated workers. As workers receive higher education, they have more professional skills and have better abilities to learn new skills and communicate with customers, who bring a greater profit for their companies; correspondingly, they can receive a higher income. Additionally, the research points out that most companies think work ethic and capacity have relations with educational level, as companies cannot judge the workers’ work ethic and capacity exactly from common recruitment examinations. Second, education plays an important role in GDP per capita, which can directly shows per-capita income level of a country. According to research by Baldacci, Clement sand Gupta (2005), having 3 additional years of schooling is associated with an increase in education spending of 1 percent of the GDP. In addition, in 15 years, where the GDP per capita increases 1 percent every year, the initial number of poor decreases 17 percent on average. In other words, education can promote GDP per capita growth.

Evidence has also shown that education has important effects on reducing poverty, which can be benefit for further development of the economy. First, education is an effective way to reduce the number of poor. If more people receive higher education, they can find better jobs with higher wages and then the number of poor will be decreased. According to a study by Coulombe, Jean, and Sylvie (2004), to date, researchers have found that in developing countries, enrollment rates of schooling have had a positive relationship with GDP growth because of an increase in the number of educated people. In addition, the study points out that if a country’s literacy scores become higher, the growth of annual per capita GDP will be more significant. This is because that if a country owns