The Macroeconomics of Education

The new study by my colleague Rick Hanushek and his coauthor Ludger Woessmann shows that bringing US education levels up to the level of Finland would raise real GDP by over $100 trillion measured in present discounted value terms over the next 80 years. Here is the chart from their paper with billions of US dollars on the vertical axis. Even in these days of trillion dollar rescue packages and growing debt burden on our grandchildren, $100 trillion is a lot of income, and the comparison with Finland shows that it is feasible.