Does the HD Index education dimension measure educational outcomes?
The education dimension has two components, the enrollment index and the educational attainment index. The enrollment index is an input indicator: it gives an indication of the future level of educational attainment for a given community. The educational attainment index, on the other hand, measures the present stock of education of a given community, and is an outcome indicator; reflecting the effectiveness of educational policies, market incentives for the pursuit of higher education, the value placed on education by society, and other factors. However, caution must be used when analyzing smaller geographical units, such as congressional districts, because highly educated people tend to move to large metropolitan areas where there is more demand for their skills. In this case, a high concentration of highly educated people has less to do with any specific educational policies than with a more demanding labor market.
