Education Attainment in the Middle East and North Africa : Success at a Cost

This paper reviews the experience of the Middle East and North Africa region in education attainment over the past four decades (1970-2010). It documents the following main findings: (a) all countries in the region experienced significant improvements in educational attainment over this period; (b) most countries in the region did better in this regard than comparators that had roughly the same education stocks in 1970; (c) collectively, the region achieved a greater percentage increase in education than other regions; (d) the region's better performance was in part because of higher rates of public spending on education, better food sufficiency status, and a lower initial stock of education in 1970 in comparison with most other developing country regions; and (e) the region had among the lowest payoffs to public spending in terms of increments in education stock; the impressive advance in education was achieved at high cost.