Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of the Social Benefits of Lifelong Learnings

This paper systematically identifies the market and non-market returns to education over the life cycle of gruaduates, as well as the social benefits externalities. It considers the most recent developments in the measurement and the valuation of these returns to additions to existing provisions for education and relates them to the costs. This is within the conceptual framework for lifelong learning defined by the graduate's life cycle, given that the capacity of graduates to learn later and to adapt is correlated with their prior schooling. The paper suggests that the capacity to finance lifelong learning depends on the capacity to identify and credibly measure these net social and private benefits, some of which are not well known and about which there is also misinformation. It also concludes that the capacity to finance education depends on political processes, which therefore are analyzed also, and on the capacity to build broad-based coalitions using knowledge about these marginal products.