A quantitative look at the economic impact of the European Union’s educational goals

This paper quantifies the economic benefits of educational improvement covered by the educational goals of the European Union, providing disaggregated projections for each of the EU countries and comparative economic results for alternative policy goals. Increased student achievement by 25 PISA points across the EU would be expected to add €71 trillion in present value to EU GDP over the status quo. By contrast, the more limited EU goal of reducing low achievement to 15 percent by country would have an impact of only €5 trillion. Central to the analysis is careful attention to the dynamics of educational reform.