Importance of education

|The Importance of Institutionalised Education for Economic Development |
|A Comparative Study of Europe and Asia |
|Sarah Carmichael |
|MA thesis in Comparative History|
|2007-2008 |
|Supervised by Jan Luiten van Zanden |

Abstract
This thesis addresses the question of whether formalised education and literacy are contributing factors to economic growth.Scotland, England, Japan and China in the 18th and 19th century are examined to compare and contrast the outcomes, and facets of education, and examine if these can provide a partial explanation of the economic divergence between Europe and Asia. The aspects studied are the sources of funding for education, the goal of education and literacy levels in each of the four case studies. A bastardised Booleanmethod is employed for the analysis while throughout the thesis the cases are explored in detail on each variable. The outcome of this analysis is that high rates of literacy and a loosely defined goal are the necessary conditions for economic growth and low levels of literacy and funding predominantly from private sources are determining conditions for lack of growth.[1]

Contents
Chapter 1 51.1 Introduction 5

1.2 Quantitative Analysis of Economic Growth 9

1.3 Explanation of the Comparative Method 11

1.2.1 Real Wages as indicator of economic growth 13

1.2.2 Urbanisation as indicator of economic growth 14

Chapter 2 –Units of Analysis 15

2.1 Socio-economic factors in England, Scotland, Japan and China 1700-1900 15

2.1.1England 15

2.1.2 Scotland 15

2.1.3Japan 16

2.1.4 China 17

2.1.5 Choice of units from a chronological perspective 18

2.2 Real wages and Urbanisation used to create a chronology of economic development 18

Chapter 3 - The Institutional Structure 25

3.1 The Sources of Funding for Education 26

3.1.1 England 26

3.1.2 Scotland 28

3.1.3 Japan 29

3.1.4 China 32

3.2 The Goal of Education 35

3.2.1 England 353.2.2 Scotland 36

3.2.3 Japan 36

3.2.4 China 37

3.3 A Comparison of the Institutional Framework 40

Table 7: Sources of Funding for Primary Education in the four case studies 41

Chapter 4 – Literacy 43

4.1 – The debate about literacy 43

4.2 England 46

Graph 4: Estimated illiteracy of men and women in England, 1500-1900 47

Table 9: Houston’s postulated illiteracypercentages for Northern England (translated into literacy percentages for consistency) 48

4.3 Scotland 49

Map 1 : Literacy and Gender in Scotland 52

Table 10: Literacy of Married couples by type of district. 1861-1870 53

Table11: Literacy of Married couples by denomination, 1896 53

4.4 Japan 54

Graph 5: Male/female illiteracy compared in three prefectures 56

Map2: Japanese literacyby district. 58

4.5 China 60

4.6 A Comparison of Literacy Levels 63

Table 12: Estimates of Literacy in the four case studies 65

Table 13 Averages of literacy for the four case studies 67

Chapter 5 - Boolean Analysis and Conclusions 68

5.1 Bastardised Boolean Analysis 68

Table 14 - Summarising Table: 68

Table 15 – Bastardised Truth Table: 69

Table 16 Labelling thevariables 70

5.1.2 Boolean Equations 70

5.2 Conclusions 72

Bibliography 75

Chapter 1

The well Educating of their Children is so much the Duty and Concern
of Parents and the Welfare and Prosperity of the Nation so much
depends on it, that I would have every one lay it seriously to Heart.
John Locke, Some thoughts concerning Education, prefatory letter to Edward Clarke...