A World Bank study titled “The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018” has asserted that national wealth calculations need a comprehensive review.
It stresses that educational attainments is the most significant component, as opposed to mere financial wealth.
What does the study say?
Investment in education is well recognised as the major or primary investment for most families in the world – one that also ensures sustained returns.
Acquisition of education is indeed acquisition of wealth, but despite education’s criticality, it isn’t prominently discussed in wealth discussions.
While there has been considerable research on the prevalent monetary inequality, even data on educational attainment across nations is scarce.
The Study - The World Bank’s recent study based their estimates on household survey data from 143 countries, over the past 2 decades.
Additionally, the study has estimated the share of education in the total wealth at about 64% - which makes it the primary determiner of richness.
Significantly, this will almost completely contradict the conventional notion of wealth as a “value of financial plus non-financial assets minus their liabilities”.
This might hence make the notion of “Rice - getting – richer” and “poor – getting – Poorer” less sellable.
New Dimension - Education as an important wealth has been known for centuries, and there has been extensive documentation on the same.
But WB’s study suggests that education is the “greatest wealth of all” by assigning it a massive 64% share in the total net – which is unprecedented.
Hence, the study is indeed path-breaking and further debates and discussions are needed to refine the context better.
