Early School Closures and Economic Growth

Yesterday, I cited research from Maryland that shows that the loss of school days has a measurable impact on performance on aptitude tests. There is also a very strong link between scores on aptitude tests and economic growth. Below is a graph from an article by Eric Hanushek, perhaps the leading expert on the economics of education, and co-authors:

Though a measure of years of schooling has a weak impact on growth this is largely due to the fact that years of schooling and education are not the same thing (for many reasons like the fact that grade repetition is common in developing countries). So measuring education by aptitude tests uncovers the very strong link between education and growth.