ABSTRACT
Critics of the economic development strategies followed by most Middle Eastern countries often point to their lagging human development indicators as a sign of failure.1 While it is true that the growth performance of these countries has been generally quite poor since the 1980s – only sub-Saharan Africa has had a worse experience – it is not true that they have failed to expand education. In fact, the rate of growth of years of schooling in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been the fastest of any region in the last 40 years.
