Education0.01 points to the social return from one year of education
for one person.^10 Finally, education reduces crime. We inves-
tigate the issue of crime in Chapter 7. From those estimates
we can infer that one extra year of education for one per-
son may reduce crime enough to generate 0.14 extra point-
years of life- satisfaction for the population.^11 When spread
over say sixty years of life, this makes little difference to the
overall assessment. As educators we had hoped the case for
general educational expansion was stronger than appears to
be the case.^12
Causes of Educational Success
Finally we turn to the causes of educational success. These
have been much studied; but it is still useful to fit them into
our overall framework, using the British Cohort Study.^13
Our aim is to explain a person’s highest educational qual-
ification (measured as usual in standardized form). The re-
sults are in Table 3.5. As explanatory factors, we include all
three measures of child development at 16. Here intellec-
tual performance is measured by a simple variable reflect-
ing whether or not the person had any O- level equivalent
(grades A*– C). Not surprisingly people with this achieve-
ment at 16 reach a final level of educational qualification
nearly one standard deviation higher than other people
do. Unlike emotional health, behavior is also a significant
predictor.
Family background also matters. If your family is three
times richer, your qualifications are on average 0.2 stan-
dard deviations higher. If your father is continuously un-
employed, they are 0.3 standard deviations lower. No other