Growth, education and sustainability: an overview

This paper aims to give a contribution to the body of literature on growth, education and sustainability. To date, this particular body is not firmly established but it is, nevertheless, growing. Indeed, the close link between sustainable development and human capital has only recently been analysed in depth, and mainly with empirical analyses. The contribution of this paper is threefold, viz.: 1) it reviews the related literature; 2) it develops a basic theoretical model for the empirical analysis; 3) it performs a panel-type empirical analysis that covers 81 countries and 11 time periods (2012–2022). The main result of this work is that generic human capital (education) is not solely the engine of economic growth because it is also, potentially, the architect of sustainable development, since human capital (education) is also necessary to increase awareness of environmental issues. Hence, the study result suggests that investment in education is the only policy that can achieve both growth and sustainability.