Productivity Measurement in the Education Sector

Investing in education is a strong priority for governments: OECD countries on average devote around 12 percent of national public expenditures to education (Figure 1), often the second or third largest public expenditure behind health care and social assistance. Since 2000, total spending on education has increased as a share of GDP in most OECD economies and many emerging market economies, reaching 6.4 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 5.6 percent of GDP in Brazil in 2012 (Figure 2). For lowand middleincome countries, UNESCO estimates that spending needs to increase from around 14 percent of their total budgets (Steer and Smith 2015) to 20 percent, or 5.5 percent of GDP, to meet the education Sustainable Development Goal (UNESCO 2014).