Calendrier du 18 septembre 2024
Du 18/09/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2-01
ULYSSEA Gabriel (University College London)
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Economic History Seminar
Du 18/09/2024 de 12:30 à 14:00
R1-09
YANG Li (ZEW Mannheim and WIL)
The Making of China and India in 21st Century: Long Run Human Capital Accumulation from 1900 to 2020
This paper investigates the economic divergence of China and India in the 1980s through the lens of long-run human capital accumulation. By integrating a wide array of historical and educational reports and surveys, we have compiled a novel dataset covering the past120 years, detailing trends in human capital accumulation in both countries. Utilizing this comprehensive dataset, we establish a comparative framework to analyze the educational development strategies of China and India and evaluate their long-term impacts on inequality and economic development. We show that the progression of modern education in China and India diverged along several key dimensions. China adopted a bottom-up approach, prioritizing quantity over quality. Conversely, India implemented a top-down strategy, gradually expanding its educational system with an emphasis on maintaining quality. Additionally, compared to India’s educational system, China’s system featured more diversified secondary and tertiary education, with a strong emphasis on vocational education, teacher training, and engineering. Driven by differing educational development strategies, India exhibits much higher education inequality, accounting for one-quarter of observed wage inequality, compared to 5-12% in China. Ironically, India has a larger share of tertiary-educated graduates alongside a significant proportion of illiterates, whereas China has a much larger share of primary, secondary, and vocational graduates. High illiteracy in India hinders structural transformation by trapping many in low-productivity agriculture, while tertiary education in the humanities and accounting has made the service sector more attractive. While China’s better mix of engineering and vocational graduates produced human capital well-suited for the developing manufacturing sector.