ABSTRACT
Human capital is a concept often used by economists to capture the productive potential of a society, and the highest level of educational attainment is often taken as a proxy to measure an individual’s and a population’s human capital. This chapter will primarily focus on the long term changes in human capital from 1970 to 2010 in countries of Asia and will be based on IIASA’s reconstructions of the educational attainment distributions by age and sex. We find that over recent decades Asia has experienced a stunning expansion of its human capital both for men and women. While in the middle of the twentieth century a high proportion of the continent’s population had no or little formal education, it is now home to some of the world’s most educated populations. In contrast, Asia is also home to some countries that significantly lag behind. In every Asian country the young cohorts are better educated than the older ones and in some countries these inter-cohort differences are very dramatic. This chapter also presents data on discussion on labour force participation in Asia in the context of longer term education trends and education specific trends in labour force.
