Iraq versus education

Via Pub Philosopher and Bloggers4Labour comes this line from Diane Abbott:

The billions that Blair is spending on his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been better spent on schools and hospitals here at home.

Is this true?
For the billions we're spending in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are buying a chance of democracy in those countries. Democracy doesn't just make people happier. It also makes them richer. This matters, because the discounted present value of a rising income stream can be a very large sum indeed. Even the small chance of such a sum could be worth billions. If so, the billions we're spending in Iraq and Afghanistan is money well spent.
By contrast, spending on schools and hospitals might not be effective.  Research by Ludger Woessmann (such as this) and Eric Hanushek shows that, across developed countries, there's little relationship between education spending and outcomes.
In the UK, recently, the link between spending and outcomes also seems weak. This paper (pdf) estimates that spending in the Excellence in Cities programme had a "positive but very small" effect on results. Howard Glennerster says primary school performance improved in the early years of New Labour even though education spending fell as a share of GDP - and as spending rose, the rate of improvement tailed off .
Diane Abbott should know this. One of her concerns - rightly - is the failure of black boys in school. On this count, and as a "socialist" she should therefore be aware of John Roemer's work on equality of opportunity, in which he estimates that, in the US, an equal opportunity policy requires that nine times (pdf) as much be spent on schooling blacks as whites. Why the huge difference? Because education spending has little impact on results.
Again, the same might be true in the UK. This note (pdf) says expensive City academies "may be the only way to bolster performance among the hardest-to-reach pupils.
Nor is it clear that there's a great link between health spending and outcomes. Some OECD figures are here. I reckon that, among the 31 developed countries in their sample, the correlation between health spending as a share of GDP in 2003 and life expectancy was positive, at 0.34, but barely statistically significantly different from zero (p=6.4%. t=1.94).
Now, everything I've said here is controversial. My point is merely that Ms Abbott's claim is highly dubious. It requires a lot of arguing for, and is sensitive to differences in assumptions - for example, about the probability of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan or the productivity of health spending.
Why, then, does she seem so strident about such a suspect claim? Could it be that she thinks an increase in Labour's client base - public sector workers - is inherently good, even if it doesn't much improve health or education? Or could it be that she implicitly thinks it's better to spend money on English people than Iraqis? How odd that an article in The Voice should carry a racist undertow.

Comments

[ricardo]

Only read the abstract of the linked Woessmann paper, but I wonder how one can satisfactorily control for endogeneity problems here? Absent reform, crap institutions might (because they lead to crap results) attract more resources, hence weak effect of resources in cross-section.
I'm sure he tries to address this, but imagine it's tricky.
Even ignoring this, my prior is that all the action is going to be in the interaction term between resources and institutional structure.

OK, I'll read the paper myself.

[Jack]

You have raised a suspicion but not a very strong one.

One can imagine a paper examining the development impact of spending on invasions of Iraq contrasted with the potential benefits of the best possible educational that might be the intended consequence of higher educational spending.

Equating those who do not fully embrace internationalism with racists is a bit of stretch. Should our schools be open to everyone? Should we have any immigration control at all? I also believe the Ms Abbott is quite big on aid spending.

She was way off base about the Finnish nurses though.

[Sunny]

Now, everything I've said here is controversial. My point is merely that Ms Abbott's claim is highly dubious.

Well, I don't find the claim that spending money on education will lead to a correlated rise in marks, but then not everything in education is purely about marks. Buying much needed stationary for example is unlikely to directly lead to increased marks.

But the money spent on education health or education here will have *some* impact, even if the ordinary person is unlikely to know what difference it would make.

The bigger question is, are we going to be successful in bringing democracy to IRaq and Afghanistan?

[catquas]

You also have to look at collateral damage to Iraq's economy and the likelihood that a future transition to democracy might occur. What if, by the time we get a return on our investment, Iraq would have started reforming anyway?

Also, this post shows that education isn't a good comparision, but there are of course other options. Spending on helping the poorest in Africa deal with AIDS and malnutrition would be much closer to be highly efficient at producing happinesss.

[Maynard Handley]

"For the billions we're spending in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are buying a chance of democracy in those countries."

The conclusion follows only if one accepts this premise.
Most people in the world do not. They believe that the invasion of Iraq was purely about oil, that of Afghanistan was not thought through, and that in both cases GWB (and probably Tony Blair) have buggerall interest in democracy except to the extent that it furthers their real ends.
The long history of British involvement in the region (Churchill poison gassing Iraqis to secure a British oil supply, through the Brits in cahoots with the Americans securing the overthrow of the Iranian government) gives one little reason to believe in their good will. The current behavior of the US govt (Guantanamo, renditions, constant sniping at Chavez for no reason other than, apparently, he won't bow at their feet, attempting to kill Palestinian democracy) further give one little reason to believe this.

So let's change the sentence to
"For the billions we're spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to sustain cheaper oil for another year or two we are simply delaying the inevitable transition away from oil, thereby making it more expensive, along with wrecking (global climate change) the lands of the already poorest people in the world, thereby generating one more generation of anger and hatred towards the west."

Compared to this, spending those billions on education and healthcare or heck, spending them on gold collars for all the dogs of the realm, doesn't seem like such a bad idea, does it?

[Paul Scargill]

Dianne Abbott's true views on state education:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/publicschools/story/0,12505,1076207,00.html

Somewhat similar to Blairs.

[Matthew]

It rather ignores the fact that the US is spending hundreds of billions of pounds in Iraq, so our contribution to creating a democracy or not can only be marginal.

[dsquared]

[Even the small chance of such a sum could be worth billions.]

You appear to be ommitting the at least as significant chance that we are in fact making democracy *less* likely in Iraq (which is a much bigger country than Afghanistan).