Re:Percent of population with a college degree, by country
by rokhayakebe on Monday March 31, 2008 @03:40AM
(#150851)
my unproven theory is that it can actually be bad for an economy in general if a vast majority of the population has a college degree. salaries will plunge, competition for positions will increase, degrees will loose their value, physicists will flip burgers, an emigration will increase drastically. off course that is until the nation can find a way to sell its talent to other countries. think India selling its IT services to the US and Europe.
GDP per capita: $39,934 (Source: http://www.econstats.com/weo/V015.htm)
Median income per household member: $23,535 (Source: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new02_001.htm)
Obviously a major discrepancy there. The median income per householder is determined via a sample census survey and would more accurately reflect average income than GDP per capita, which is constructed by dividing GDP by the population. Probably of more interest would be median income per householders over 18 to exclude all the kids. Then you could check the correlations between income and education.
Notwithstanding, I'm not that convinced there would be a very strong correlation across countries, in part because of the multitude of other factors that would influence income. There are also other factors to consider regarding the construction of the statistics, such as purchasing price parity, the definitions each country has used for education level, etc. Trying to attain ceteris paribus (all things being equal) for this would be a nightmare.