Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard. Two
weeks ago, I wondered why Argentina’s economy had fared so
poorly during the 20th century. Argentina’s current income is
indeed quite low relative to its income one century ago, but the
country’s low income today is less surprising given its
education level in 1900. I ended my post with this graph showing
the strong correlation between education in 1900 and income in
2000. Argentina in 2000 was doing just about as well as one
might expect based on its education level in 1900: But why would
education in 1900 correlate so well with income today? Why did
the 20th century belong to countries, like the United States,
that were investing so much in education a century ago? One
reason that historical education levels have such predictive
power is that educational investment is extremely persistent.
School enrollments in 1900 can explain more than 72 percent of
the variation in years of schooling across countries today, as
measured by data collected by Rober