Education and Development: The Issues and the Evidence

regionally within countries where, for example, educated youths migrate and take with
them skills and capabilities that are lost to their region but not to their country. It is also
relevant to international migration which is increasingly an issue related to migration
between developing countries as well as from developing to developed.

2.1.4 Education, equity and income
distribution

Income inequality may be affected by educational investment in a number of ways.
These include the ability of more educational provision to raise income levels in
general and remove groups from absolute poverty - richer countries tend to have lower
levels of income inequality; the ability of education to raise incomes disproportionately
amongst the poorest and provide avenues for social mobility; the financing and
organisation of education in ways which generally favour poorer rather than richer
families in terms of participation and which thereby diminish income inequality arising
from the higher earnings of the more educated; and the interaction of educational level
with other variables - fertility, mortality, health which have a bearing on income
distribution at the family and individual level.

The studies which have attempted to link increased educational investment and
participation with income inequality do not show that strong relationships usually exist.
Jallade (1974) argued that income inequality in Brazil had not diminished as a result of
increased educational provision. Field's (1980) review of five developing countries
concluded that though individual incomes were determined more than anything else by
educational level achieved, relationships between distribution and performance on
educational indicators at the country level were weaker than those with aggregate
economic growth. Carnoy et al (1979) suggests that the explanation for this apparent
paradox lies in the fact that earnings are influenced more by government incomes
policies and by organisational features of employment than by educational levels of
employees. Leonor and Richards (1980) argue in a similar vein using data from the
Philippines and Shri Lanka. In both cases however both educational opportunity and
income distribution appear to have improved over time.

Knight and Sabot (1982) argue that educational expansion in Kenya has reduced the
relative earnings differential associated with secondary graduates by roughly 20% and
has thereby reduced income inequality. This they suggest has been a more effective
policy than government intervention on wages in the public sector, the favoured
strategy in Tanzania. They thus argue the contrary point of view to Carnoy.

Intergenerational mobility appears to have become more dependent on the educational
background of parents and employers have become more likely to discriminate between
potential employees on the basis of family backgrounds in Kenya (ibid: 37). Income

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