The importance of human capital in the form of education as a determinant of economic development has been highlighted in the theoretical and empirical economic growth literature. Less attention has been paid to the distributional characteristics of educational attainment within and across age groups, as well as between males and females. Exploiting new Age-structured data on educational attainment, we present an analysis of the degree of equality in the distribution of education in Europe over the last decades, both within and across generations. We highlight the differences existing across European regions and the changes experienced over time, as well as those implied by projected trajectories of educational attainment in the future.

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that countries which are able to reduce the inequality of educational attainment of young cohorts over time tend to have higher growth rates of income per capita. This effect is additional to that implied by the accumulation of human capital and implies that policies aiming at providing broad-based access to schooling have returns in terms of economic growth that go beyond those achieved by increasing average educational attainment. / Series: WWWforEurope