Abstract :
Education is one of the most important fundamental factors that affect economic development. None of the countries can achieve sustainable development by ignoring education. Education improves people’s well-being and living standards by rising the social benefits which are utilized either by individuals or as a society, education develops people’s talents, skills, creativity, productivity, imagination, knowledge in any branch and also enhances advances in technology. With all those critical points in hand, education has as very important effect on both social and economic progress in Turkey by increasing the welfare of the society. During the twentieth century; education, experience and the acquisition of knowledge have become the basic determinants of a nation’s productivity. That is why it is called the “Age of Human Capital” and the determinant of a country’s living standards is how well it succeeds in improving the skills and knowledge by educating the majority of its population. Demand on logical or analytical reasoning or providing technical and characterized knowledge with very simple way of schooling will rise the productivity of labours in high-skilled occupations or make them to have more professional positions. Education itself improves not just the productivity of workers or high-skilled ones, but also increases the productivity of farmers. So the greater the rate of schooling, the greater will be the investment on human capital in the society and the greater the increase in economic growth. In this respect, investment in Human Capital can be considered as the expenditure on education, skills, talents and career related knowledge which increase as person’s adaptability to changing requirements of the economy, develop the quality of human being and increase the income of a person, family and the nation as a whole. So education contributes directly to the growth of national income by improving the productive capacities of the work force. Because Human capital takes important part in economic literature, the concept of capital has been defined as all monetary and non-substantive economic values to be instrumental in production. In this respect, human capital in general is defined as proper knowledge, skills and all other individual qualifications. This definition also involves education, work experience, learningby- doing, training and all other activities which people can use their skills more efficiently. All those components fasten economic development by providing rational fulfillment. It can be said that accumulation in human capital provides positive externalities by giving a direct force to measure the productive effects, developing innovation in knowledge and skills, decreasing the cost of transferring information and helping people to find a better position in the work force. In the process of economic development, another important shift revolves around education, it has a permanent place in economists theory on human capital and modernization progress. Since the private financial return of education is quite substantial. So additional year of schooling will automatically raises the individual’s earning power, wealth and life standards. Moreover, society’s investment in human beings is a social investment as it is profitable. The fundamental contribution of education on economic growth is to increase the level of skills, talents, konwledge and experience of people to be more enabled in the work force. There is a positive feedback from improved education to greater income inequality which yields to a higher rates of economic growth. When education is observed more comprehensively, people earning low income are better able to contrive economic opportunities. Dollar and Gatti (1999) also examined the relationship between gender inequality in education and growth. They tried to explain five-year growth intervals and attempts to control the possible endogeneity between education and growth using instrumental variable estimation. They found that female secondary education achievement is positively associated with growth, while male secondary achievement is negatively associated with growth. In the full sample, both effects are insignificant, but it turns out that in countries with low female education, female education does not promote economic growth while in countries with higher female education levels, promoting female education has a sizeable and significant positive impact on economic growth. The formal education system consists of three levels of schooling in Turkey: primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary school provides five years of elementary education while junior secondary and senior secondary school (except technical high schools) takes three years. In August 1997, compulsory education has extended from five to eight years covering junior secondary school. Primary education covers the children aged 6-14 with the new compulsory education system. Before 1997, children were enrolled in primary education at age 6 to 11. From 12 to 14, they were in junior secondary school while between 15 and 17 they went to senior secondary school. By means of all those progress, there have been considerable improvements in the rate of graduated women working in the labor force since 1980. Considering all the educational levels examined in past 30 years, it is highly significant that the ratio of higher educated women working in the labor force has increased enormously from 7.2 percent to 31.1 percent with showing a raising trend in primary, secondary and senior secondary education. The rate of primary school graduated women working in the labor force was 0.38 percent in 1980 while it has enourmously increased to 95,3 percent in 2009, while the rate of junior secondary school female graduates working in the labor force was 14.07 percent in 1980 while it has shown an increase with 57.04 percent. The rate of senior secondary school graduated women working in the labor force was 9.04 percent in 1980, but it has raised to 21.88 percent (SIS, 2010) However, the fertility rate is slightly related to countries socio-economic and cultural level of development. Countries with high human capital are acquiring lower level of fertility rates. In Turkey, as in many other developing countries, between the early 1960s and mid’1980s the total fertility rate declined unexpectedly and the country thereby experienced a rapid fertility transition. Also in Turkey, there are low fertility rates in the west and high fertility rates in the east. Because of inadequacy in some social and economic incentives for some provinces in Turkey, the quality of participating in schoolin is still poor and women’s educational attainment are low. So illiteracy among women living in those regions is not showing a good framework. It is becuase they are sent to school due to social and cultural norms, traditions and homework duties. This paper investigates the major issues and problems of females in Turkey and the characteristics required for school improvement with many educational reforms which have to be faced and problems from the perspective of women. It is a brief overview of the field of human capital theory. It also highlights the role of education on economic development, GDP, literacy, fertility and female labor force. A critical evaluation of the literature revealed that education is a determinant of human capital. This is followed by explaining data which were used to construct Time-series with the help of variables provided.. Four equations are used to examine the relationship between the variables. The first equation measures the impact of education, female labor force and Human Development Indicators on economic development (GDP per capita growth). However, these regressors can also be taken into regression separately to measure how each of them affect economic growth one by one. In equation two, only education variables are taken as independent variables, while in equation three, the effect of female labor force by using the impressions of dummy variables are tested. In equation four, the effect of literacy and fertility rates are explored. Special attention is given here to theoretical and empirical literature of how education as human capital affects their living standards and economic development as a society in Turkey where traditional and cultural beliefs are still widespread and having an impact on female education and female labour force participation rates.
