How popularising higher education affects economic growth and poverty alleviation: empirical evidence from 38 countries

Abstract The popularisation of higher education supports UNESCO’s aim of developing inclusive and equitable quality education to achieve the fourth Sustainable Development Goal. However, the effect of popularising higher education on economic growth and poverty alleviation remains unexplored. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of higher education and adult education within populations (popularisation of higher education) on economic growth (gross domestic product; GDP) and the poverty line using panel data from 38 countries. OLS and quantile regression were performed using data for the period 1995–2021 extracted from the OECD and World Bank databases. The results showed that the population segments with higher education had a significantly positive impact on GDP growth. Moreover, an increased proportion of the population with higher education, of working age, was found to be a contributing factor to GDP growth. Popularising higher education also played a positive role during the initial stage of social and economic development. This study also highlighted that popularising higher education play a key role to influence a country’s educational development and scientific and technological innovation drives the deepening of a country’s economy. It suggested that both national and local governments worldwide should pay much attention to the popularisation degree of higher education to greatly improve the innovative ability of talents and scientific and technological innovation in higher education for both the economic growth and poverty alleviation.