Numeracy, Human-Capital and Economic Growth

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Economics - History, grade: 3, University of Tubingen (Wirtschaftgeschichte), course: Hauptseminar "Humankapital und Wachstum in armen und reichen Ländern", language: English, abstract: Numeracy together with literacy is a basic element of human capital. Recently some international tests were conducted to make comparisons of the numeracy level among different countries. Human capital is a long term economic growth factor. To quantify human capital, various indicators are composed: adult literacy rate, school enrolment rate, etc. These human capital indicators facilitate researchers to analyze the correlation between human capital quality and economic performance of a certain economy. Age heaping, an indicator normally used in demography to check the reliability of a census, is a possible human capital indicator. It can reflect the numeracy level of the researched population. It is shown that for little educated populations, age heaping is a possible human capital indicator, which reflects the human capital level of the researched population.