The endowment of human capital assumes a crucial value that transcends those who benefit from it in the first instance: it promotes the generation and diffusion of new ideas that impart impetus to technical progress; it improves earnings prospects and, closing the virtuous circle, increases the incentive for further investment in human capital.
As a primary source of accumulation of this type of capital, the educational system produces major externalities that help raise the growth prospects of the entire economy. This is one of the most interesting insights of the “new” theories of endogenous growth.