Age-heaping-based human capital estimates

Abstract

In this article, we provide comprehensive insights into the implementation and the use of the age-heaping method. Age heaping can be applied to approximate basic numerical skills and hence basic education. We discuss the advantages and potential issues of different indicators, and we show the relationship of those indicators with literacy and schooling. The application of age-heaping-based indicators enables us to explore various topics on basic education such as the gender gap and the divergence of countries in the very long run. This well-established technique has been used by a great variety of authors who also show that numeracy has a large impact on growth.