Abstract
Seen from an economic perspective, education is an investment. It represents a spending today, which must produce an additional amount of wealth and comfort tomorrow. The cost of education is quite high. In France it represents 6 to 7% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, you must add to this percentage the opportunity cost of the time spent in school or university instead of working which could produce wealth immediately. Some effects of education on health, democracy, personal development, etc. are invaluable and therefore hardly measurable. Thus, without miscalculating them, the economist usually focus on an easily measurable scale, which is wealth measured by the GDP or the individual income. Does more education produce more wealth, and under what conditions may it produce more wealth? These are the main questions which are asked of the economy of education in order to assess the return on educational investment.
