Education and income distribution in Asia / by P. Richards and M. Leonor

Education is now the major programme of government expenditure in Asian countries and its promotion, which usually means simply its expansion, offers the promise of equality of opportunity and of social mobil ity, which should combine to increase the chances of economic equality and improve income distribution. However, the opposite frequently occurs, and educational expansion serves to create greater inequality.

This study looks in detail at a number of aspects of the relation between employment and income, at the way that well-paid jobs are allocated within the labour market, at the problems of access to schooling for the children of the Asian poor and at the process of ability creation that takes place within schools.

The authors argue that educational expansion in Asia has simply spread resources so thinly that initial background advantages continue to carry overwhelming weight. Nor is vocational training necessarily a solution. Concluding that the distribution of school ing and of abilities are both unequal, this important study illustrates how a fast rate of expansion of low quality education can merely worsen the distribution of income.