FIGURE 15-7 China’s Students Are Catching Up

In both China and Argentina, the average educational leve
l—measured by the number of years the average adult aged 25 or older has spent in school—has risen over time. Although China is still lagging behind Argentina, it is catching up—and China’s success at adding human capital is one key to its spectacular long-run growth.Data from: Robert Barro and Jon
g-Wha Lee, “A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950–2010,” NBER Working Paper No. 15902 (April 2010), http://www.barrolee.com.