World Development Report 1984

and on farms. But the evidence on education sug- because fertility had started to fall in the late 1960s.
gests that capital-widening-spreading resources This allowed enrollment rates to rise; as the chilover
more and more people-can be counterpro- dren of poor parents were least likely to have been
ductive. enrolled before, the poor probably benefited most
from the spread of education.
SCHOOLING REQUIREMENTS AND CAPITAL WIDEN- For high-fertility countries, the situation could
ING. In industrial countries, school-age popula- not be more different. Countries such as Kenya
tions are expected to grow slowly, if at all, over the face a doubling or tripling of their school-age popnext
two decades (see Figure 5.1). The same is true ulation by the end of the century. The main impliof
those developing countries, such as China, cation is clear. More school-age children require
Colombia, and Korea, where fertility has already more spending on education, even if the objective
fallen substantially. In Colombia, the number of is just to maintain current enrollment rates and
school-age children doubled between 1950 and standards. As most developing countries want to
1970. But it increased only slightly in the 1970s, improve their schools quantitatively and qualitatively,
they will have to generate more national
savings or curtail other investments in, for example,
power and transport. If a country is unwilling
FIGURE 5. orual1 omk hs sciie pnigms
Index of school-age and working-age populations, or unable to make these sacrifices, spending must
selected countries, 1950-2000 be spread over a larger group of school children (to
Index the detriment of the quality of education); other-
(1950=100) wise a growing number of children have to be
700 , excluded.
/t' These awkward choices come after a period of
600 Kenya , considerable progress. Over the past twenty years,
School-age enrollment rates have increased at the primary,
soo population secondary, and university levels in almost all
400 / developing countries. (The enrollment rate is the
400 ," number of students enrolled in schools as a percentage
of the school-age population.) In some
300 Colombia cases, progress has been remarkable. Education
tends to spread as per capita income rises, but
200 Korea some of the lowest-income countries-Sri Lanka,
~h i n a Tanzania, Viet Nam-have already achieved, or are
100 _-S=iR- China/ fast approaching, universal primary education.
Hungary 7"^~v_,,+" ~'~' Such achievements have substantially raised the
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 fiscal burden of education. For the developing
countries as a group, public spending on educa-
tion increased from 2.3 percent of GNP in 1960 to
Index
(1950=100) 3.9 percent in 1974, and from 11.7 percent to 15.1
600 percent of government budgets. But the propor-
Kenya , tion of GNP allocated to education declined
500 / slightly over the 1970s, as did the share of educa-
Working-age / tion spending in government budgets, especially
400 population ' in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa,
Colombia and Latin America.
300 - The budgetary downgrading of education, coup-
_-- China led with slower economic growth, has reduced the
200 quality of education in many developing countries.
Hungary One study showed that in Latin America public
100 '-- spending per primary student fell by almost 45
K. percent in real terms between 1970 and 1978. As a
Korea share of educational budgets, spending on non-
84
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 wage items-chalk, maps, textbooks, and so onfell
in eight out of ten Latin American countries. In