Formal Education and Agricultural Productivity of Labor: Evidence from Iran, MENA and World

The basic pillars of human capital theory have been based upon the importance of farmer's education in increase of their productivity. In effect, the argument is that educated farmers can produce new or more products. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and test the impact of formal education in the whole of society, not exclusively in farm households, on productivity of agriculture sector. To do this, three samples including Iran, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and whole of the world (158 countries) have been used respectively. The prominent feature of current research is use of various measures of education including its quality. Findings, as a whole, suggest that quantitative and qualitative increase of education helps to the rising of agricultural productivity. Therefore, spending resources in education particularly as constructing educational equipment relevant to agriculture in farm regions is an investment with return.