Development
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High school and university-level education was long an elite pursuit. However, with economic growth and rising technical complexity, the need for specialised knowledge and skills increased. In the lead-up to and during industrialisation, higher education systems admitted a growing number of students and diversified across an increasing range of courses and types of educational institutions.…
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The first universities were established in the medieval age, connected to the Catholic church and educating only a small handful. A millennium later, and universities have expanded in number, scope and scale: tens of thousands of institutions of higher education exist around the world, with hundreds of millions of students studying fields ranging from the…
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Why do we experience economic growth? As our economies develop, why do we expect long-term living standards to rise? Such progress is not an immutable law of economic activity. On the contrary, economic growth (on a per capita basis) is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of human history, strong economic performance didn’t translate to…
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That people sometimes err when recalling their age is not uncommon. (I have even been guilty of it myself!) The problem is more acute in historical settings, and even in developing countries today: individuals with limited access to education are less able to calculate their age. An observed tendency is for innumerate people to round…
