اندازه گيري برخورداري آموزشي سرمايه انساني در ايران

Measuring Educational Attainment of Iranian Human Capital

In the early years of 1960s, Schultz and Denison introduced the concept of human capital. Since then economists have analyzed the role of human capital on various economic variables. Education, experiment, and health are three main dimensions of human capital among which education is considered as the most important one. The educational dimension of human capital is known as educational attainment. In this paper, after introducing different indexes, which have been used for educational attainment, we argue that average years of schooling is the most important index of educational attainment. By reviewing Barroʹs method for calculating average years of schooling, and implementing essential changes needed for consistency with the Iranian educational system and the data, we develope a method for calculating the average years of schooling in Iran. We calculate average years of schooling of men and women, and also for four educational levels (elementary, guidance, secondary and higher education) for the period 1961 to 2001.