Study Links Math/Science Skills to Economic Growth

How a country’s students perform in math and science tests are linked to the country’s GDP economic growth rates claims a new research study from Stanford University and the University of Munich. The study focuses on participant cognitive skills (what they know) versus how long they have been in a classroom. The study claims US students continue to lag behind the rest of the world and puts an economic “pain point” to that sub par performance at .67% of GDP per year. That is, if the US performed on par with the ROW in cognitive math/science tests, the US GDP would grow .67% faster each year, or be about $87 billion larger. Link to report pdf below.

http://media.hoover.org/documents/ednext_20082_HanushekWoessmann_unabridged.pdf