The role of school fees in achieving both allocative and productive efficiency in the delivery of primary education has been a subject of intense debate. Building on a simple model that makes explicit the role of school fees in determining the optimal level of parental participation to school...

We evaluate the wage impact of the strong and rapid increase in schooling levels experienced by the cohorts born after WWII in France. In order to identify the causal effect of education, we exploit the fact that the small group of people graduating from elite education (Grandes Ecoles) remained...

This paper examines the expansion of compulsory schooling in fifteen Western European countries over the period 1950-2000. We show that a convergence process of mandatory years of schooling has occurred across these countries since 1950. We argue that the major driver of this phenomenom is the...

We consider redistributional taxation between people with and without human capital if education is endogenous and if individuals differ in their perceptions about own ability. Those who see their ability as low like redistributive taxation because of the transfers it generates. Those who see...

Universal Primary Education (UPE) is one of the main objectives of development aid. However, very little empirical evidence of its effectiveness actually exists. Until very recently, the quality of available data was not sufficient to obtain robust results regarding the relationship between...

This paper aims at assessing the level of Human Development Index for La Réunion for the years 1985, 1990 and 1995-2005. It appears that the region experienced a significant progress of human development during this period. However, the gap between La Réunion and France is persistent in the...

The usual manner of describing inequality in a population, involves income distributions. China has experienced rapid income growth, led by reforms which have exacerbated income inequalities. Other components of well-being have been affected as well. Education and health care have become less...

What are the implications of Piketty's Capital for sociology and political science? Capital's argument focuses on the evolution of the r/g ratio (capital returns over growth rate) and outlines two modes of economic inequalities. One is characteristic of affluent (g r) societies and the other is...

Economic literature clearly establishes the link between socio-economic status, good health and a high level of education. Health status also appears to be a determining factor in an individual's present and future preferences (Disney et al., 2006). The relationship between health status and...

This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period 1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007) database. The correlation between the two sets of average years of schooling in 1960 is equal to 0.96. We...