Summer school 1964: education and the development of human resources

Abstract

Economic activity can be described as a struggle against scarcity for the purpose of satisfying needs. Every society following certain patterns of organization and applying certain techniques, produces a quantity of goods and services likely to provide it with the maximum present or anticipated well-being. In a market economy, the goods and services produced will mostly be those voted for by income holders, each person voting as many times as he possesses money units. In a centralized economy, production will comprise what is judged to be most in conformity with the interests of society by the planning authorities. Education today absorbs quite a considerable a proportion of the resources of every country. There are some who would like to consider educational expenditure as a function of national income and have calculated an income-elasticity, much greater than one, for this expenditure. From this angle, as the income of a country increases, the proportion of that income allocated to education rises more than proportionally.