Education and Economic Growth: A Meta-Regression Analysis

This paper surveys the literature which examines the effect of education on economic growth. Specifically, we apply meta-regression analysis to 57 studies with 989 estimates and show that there is substantial publication selection bias toward a positive impact of education on growth. Once we account for this, the genuine growth effect of education is not homogeneous across studies, but varies according to several factors. Specifically, it is attributed to differences in education measurement and study characteristics, mainly model specification as well as type of data used, and the quality of research outlets where studies are published, e.g., academic journals vs. working papers.