¿Cantidad o calidad de la educación? Un análisis por Comunidades Autónomas

Resumen:Los factores que determinan la capacidad productiva de una economía en el largo plazo, según la teoría económica clásica, contemplan elementos como el capital físico, la tecnología, el número de trabajadores y su calidad. Dicha calidad está determinada, en gran medida, por lo que se conoce como capital humano (el stock de conocimientos, habilidades y hábitos). De este modo, se interpreta que un incremento en el nivel educativo de los trabajadores mejora su capital humano, aumenta la productividad de dichos trabajadores, mejorasus ingresos y se traduce en un incremento del output de la economía. La educación superior como fuente de innovación que impulsa las mejoras en productividad, se presenta, así, como un factor determinante del crecimiento económico en el largo plazo. Si bien los años de formación superior de la población, se relacionan directamente con la generación de nuevas ideas para impulsar las economías, recientemente algunos especialistas han cuestionado este principio, sugiriendo prestar atención también a medidas basadas en la calidad de los años de estudio. La ausencia de buenas medidas de la calidad universitaria para valorar las diferencias en el impacto en las distintas economías, sugiere suplir esta carencia por las habilidades cognitivas de la población en estadios más tempranos, asumiendo que mejores escolares producirán mejores universitarios y, a partir de ellas, valorar su influencia en el crecimiento económico. El presente trabajo adopta este punto de vista y se centra en el análisis de la influencia que, en el crecimiento económico de las distintas Comunidades Autónomas (CCAA), suponen los años de estudios universitarios y las habilidades cognitivas de la población evaluadas mediante datos del Informe PISA. Hasta donde llega nuestro conocimiento, éste es el primer estudio que se lleva a cabo bajo este enfoque, que permite descubrir diferencias relevantes en cuanto a la implicación de la cantidad versus la calidad de la formación, en el crecimiento económico autonómico en España. Abstract:According to the classical economic theory, the physical capital, the technology and the number of workers and their quality are key factors that drive the productive capacity of an economy in the long term. To a great extent, the workers’ quality is determined by what is known as the human capital, i.e. the stock of knowledge, skills and habits. In this sense, it can be concluded that an increase in the educational level of the workers improves their human capital, increases their productivity and thereby improves their incomes transferring this increase to the economy output. Higher education as a source of innovation that drives the productivity’ improvements is then revealed as a determinant factor of the economic growth in the long term. Although the years of higher education of the population are directly related to the generation of new ideas to boost the economies, some specialists have recently questioned this principle and suggest focusing on measures based on the quality of the years of study. There is a lack of good measures of university quality to assess the differences of the impact along the different economies. Thus, to supply this lack some experts suggest considering the cognitive skills of the population in earlier stages, bearing in mind that better schoolchildren will produce better university students. The present work adopts this point of view and focuses on the analysis of the influence of the years of university studies and the cognitive abilities of the population evaluated through data from the PISA Report, in the economic growth of the different Spanish Regions. This pioneer work focuses in two goals. First, to analyze by the Spanish Regions the variables of interest: labor productivity, GDP per capita, average years of study of the population and scores of the PISA report in reading, science and mathematics, and the statistical relations between them are analyzed. Second, by using statistical and econometric methods we evaluate the influence of the cognitive abilities of the population along with the years of university studies in the growth rates of the Spanish Regions. The economic growth of the different Spanish Regions is analyzed by means of regional GDP per capita as a measure of regional wealth and labor productivity. We have found that the Spanish Regions with the highest productivity also maintain a GDP per capita (GDPpc) higher than the national average. Moreover, the estimated regression model between GDPpc and productivity per hour worked by Spanish Region in 2015 allows us to conclude that productivity explains 91% of the GDPpc variability. The average years of study of the population is an appropriate proxy variable for the population rate with university studies, the linear correlation is 0.977. An intuitive explanation for this fact is that schooling up to the age of 16 is mandatory by law throughout Spain. Thus, the variability among Spanish Regions concerning the average years of study of the population, taking into account factors such as school dropout, is explained at the expense of the non-compulsory educational sections, that is, baccalaureate and higher education. Therefore, the Spanish Regions with the highest average of years of study also have the highest rates of population with university studies. For the Spanish Regions, a higher quality of human capital is related to higher GDPpc and productivity. The linear correlation between the average years of study of the population and the GDPpc is 0.87, whereas with the labor productivity is 0.88. Moreover, a simple linear regression analysis shows that the average years of study explains 75.35% of the GDPpc variability. Therefore, multiple variables affect the performance of students and therefore the quality of human capital. On the one hand, economic, social and cultural factors influence, and on the other, those associated with the characteristics of schools, students and their environment. The relationship between the socioeconomic and cultural level of families and student performance is usually interpreted as a measure of equity in educational systems, since a lower relationship between them may imply that educational systems reproduce to a lesser extent the existing differences in the social and family environment of the students in the educational performance. It is worth wondering whether assessing the quality of human capital for years of training may be inappropriate, considering that one year of schooling does not produce the same cognitive skills in all territories. In the absence of comparable quality indicators among the different university studies, in order to assess their impact on the economic growth of the Spanish Regions, in this work the scores of the PISA Report will be used as proxy variables of the cognitive skills of the population. The level obtained in these evaluations in pre-university stages is assumed as an indicator of the added abilities of the students after their schooling, since each level of studies acquired is supposed to be constructed from the previous levels. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years. Bearing in mind that the highest correlation between the scores of the PISA report and variables such as GDPpc, employment rate or R&D expenditure with respect to GDP is given for mathematics scores, we quantify the impact of these scores on the economic growth of the Autonomous Regions, through the analysis of the average annual variation rate of GDPpc by Autonomous Communities in the period 2000-2015. By using different econometric models of long-term economic growth, we show that although the years of study of the population stimulate economic growth, increasing the number of years of schooling is not enough to improve the wealth of the regions. The question that arises now is to analyze in what educational stage it is more relevant to reinforce investment in education in order to improve the labor factor in the growth model. As a conclusion, this paper evaluates the impact of the cognitive abilities of the population on long-term economic growth in the Spanish Regions. Nevertheless, factors such as technological capital and physical capital that affect the economic growth and, therefore, the percentage of unexplained variability of the long-term GDPpc growth rate, have not been included in the model, since they are outside the scope of this study. By estimating different models, we conclude that considering the population's skills measured in PISA scores in mathematics improves the goodness-of-fit of the adjusted models. We also show that the innovation intensity of the companies, the labor productivity and the scores of the PISA report in mathematics, manage to explain together 53% of the variability of the long-term growth rates of the GDPpc of the Spanish Regions.