ABSTRACT
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the concept of human development has become firmly established as the ultimate goal of national and global economic and social policies. The idea that a person’s skills tend to determine their economic status and standard of living was first discussed by the social philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Individuals need to decide whether to invest time, effort, and money into a university degree, and then to choose between various specializations which differ in their monetary and non-pecuniary returns. Policymakers are interested in allocating funding to primary, secondary, and tertiary education sectors to maximize the social gains from education, laying foundations for the national economic performance in the future and reducing socioeconomic inequality. Modern literature in the field places much emphasis on using causal inference and policy evaluation. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
