本篇文章共分 A-F 6 大段 (為配合題目出題，有些大段中包含 2 個小段)，從資料庫的建立、沿革、內容指標、到如何利用此資料庫探究一個長久以來只有直覺卻缺乏科學證據的經濟問題，以及此問題在現代社會的重要性，一一加以說明。

本篇考題英文原文與對應之中文翻譯整理如下。練習作答解題時若有對語意不清楚之處，請仔細查閱對照，以提升閱讀理解能力。

Does education fuel economic growth? 教育能否促進經濟成長？

1. 十年有成

   Over the last decade, a huge database about the lives of southwest German villagers between 1600 and 1900 has been compiled by a team led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Economics. It includes court records, guild ledgers, parish registers, village censuses, tax lists and – the most recent addition – 9,000 handwritten inventories listing over a million personal possessions belonging to ordinary women and men across three centuries. Ogilvie, who discovered the inventories in the archives of two German communities 30 years ago, believes they may hold the answer to a conundrum that has long puzzled economists: the lack of evidence for a causal link between education and a country’s economic growth.

   在過去的十年裡，劍橋大學經濟學院的奧格爾維 (Sheilagh Ogilvie) 教授領導的一個團隊彙整了一個關於 1600 至 1900 年間德國西南部村民生活的龐大資料庫。這資料庫包括法庭記錄、公會帳簿、教區登記冊、村莊人口普查、稅收清單以及最近增加的 9000 份手寫清單，列出了三個世紀以來屬於普通婦女和男性的 100 多萬件個人財產。奧格爾維 30 年前在兩個德國社區的檔案中發現了這些清單，他認為這些清單可能為長期以來困惑經濟學家的一個難題提供了答案：缺乏證據表明教育與國家經濟增長之間存在因果關係。

2. 教育與經濟發展關係不明

   As Ogilvie explains, ‘Education helps us to work more productively, invent better technology, and earn more … surely it must be critical for economic growth? But, if you look back through history, there’s no evidence that having a high literacy rate made a country industrialise earlier.’ Between 1600 and 1900, England had only mediocre literacy rates by European standards, yet its economy grew fast and it was the first country to industrialise. During this period, Germany and Scandinavia had excellent literacy rates, but their economies grew slowly and they industrialised late. ‘Modern cross-country analyses have also struggled to find evidence that education causes economic growth, even though there is plenty of evidence that growth increases education,’ she adds.

   正如奧格爾維所解釋的，“教育幫助我們更有效率地工作，發明更好的技術，賺取更多的錢……當然，它對經濟增長一定是至關重要的。但是，如果你回顧一下歷史，沒有證據表明，擁有高識字率會使一個國家更早實現工業化。”在 1600 年至 1900 年期間，按照歐洲的標準，英國的識字率很一般，但其經濟增長很快，是第一個實現工業化的國家。在這一時期，德國和斯堪地納維亞的識字率很高，但其經濟增長緩慢，工業化也較晚。“現代跨國分析也很難找到教育導致經濟增長的證據，儘管有大量證據表明經濟成長會提升教育，” 她補充說。

3. 多重指標

   In the handwritten inventories that Ogilvie is analysing are the belongings of women and men at marriage, remarriage and death. From badger skins to Bibles, sewing machines to scarlet bodices – the villagers’ entire worldly goods are included. Inventories of agricultural equipment and craft tools reveal economic activities; ownership of books and education­ related objects like pens and slates suggests how people learned. In addition, the tax lists included in the database record the value of farms, workshops, assets and debts; signatures and people’s estimates of their age indicate literacy and numeracy levels; and court records reveal obstacles (such as the activities of the guilds) that stifled industry.

   Previous studies usually had just one way of linking education with economic growth – the presence of schools and printing presses, perhaps, or school enrolment, or the ability to sign names. According to Ogilvie, the database provides multiple indicators for the same individuals, making it possible to analyse links between literacy, numeracy, wealth, and industriousness, for individual women and men over the long term.

   在奧格爾維所分析的手寫清單中，有婦女和男性在結婚、再婚和死亡時的財物。從獾皮到《聖經》，從縫紉機到猩紅色緊身馬甲—村民們的全部世俗物品都包括在內。農業設備和工藝工具的清單揭示了經濟活動；書籍和教育相關物品（如鋼筆和寫字用石板）的所有權表明人們是如何學習的。此外，資料庫中的稅單記錄了農場、工廠、資產和債務的價值；簽名和人們對自己年齡的估計表明了識字和算術水準；法庭記錄揭示了扼殺工業的障礙（如行會的活動）。

   以前的研究通常只有一種方式將教育與經濟增長聯繫起來—也許是學校和印刷廠的存在，或者是學校的入學率，或者是簽署姓名的能力。據奧格爾維說，該資料庫為同一個人提供了多個指標，從而有可能分析個別婦女和男性在長期的識字、算術、財富和勤奮之間的關聯。

4. 從案例探究驅動因素

   Ogilvie and her team have been building the vast database of material possessions on top of their full demographic reconstruction of the people who lived in these two German communities. ‘We can follow the same people – and their descendants – across 300 years of educational and economic change,’ she says. Individual lives have unfolded before their eyes. Stories like that of the 24-year-olds Ana Regina and Magdalena Riethmiillerin, who were chastised in 1707 for reading books in church instead of listening to the sermon. ‘This tells us they were continuing to develop their reading skills at least a decade after leaving school,’ explains Ogilvie. The database also reveals the case of Juliana Schweickherdt, a 50-year-old spinster living in the small Black Forest community of Wildberg, who was reprimanded in 1752 by the local weavers’ guild for ‘weaving cloth and combing wool, counter to the guild ordinance’. When Juliana continued taking jobs reserved for male guild members, she was summoned before the guild court and told to pay a fine equivalent to one third of a servant’s annual wage. It was a small act of defiance by today’s standards, but it reflects a time when laws in Germany and elsewhere regulated people’s access to labour markets. The dominance of guilds not only prevented people from using their skills, but also held back even the simplest industrial innovation.

   奧格爾維和她的團隊一直在對生活在這兩個德國社區的人們進行全面的人口學重建，並在此基礎上建立龐大的物質財富資料庫。她說：“我們可以追蹤同一批人—以及他們的後代—跨越 300 年的教育和經濟變化。” 個人的生活已經在他們眼前展開。像 24 歲的安娜-雷吉娜和馬格達萊納-里特米勒林的故事，他們在 1707 年因在教堂看書而不是聽講而受到責罰。“這告訴我們，他們在離開學校至少十年後還在繼續發展他們的閱讀技能，” 奧格爾維解釋說。該資料庫還揭示了朱莉安娜-施韋克赫德特的案例，她是一名 50 歲的紡織女工，住在維爾德貝格的黑森林小社區，1752 年因 “違反公會織布和梳理羊毛的條例” 而受到當地織工公會的訓斥。當朱莉安娜繼續從事專屬於男性行會成員的工作時，她被傳喚到行會法庭，並被告知要支付相當於一個僕人年薪三分之一的罰款。以今天的標準來看，這只是一個小小的違抗行為，但它反映了德國和其他地方的法律對人們進入勞動力市場進行管制的時代。行會的主導地位不僅阻止了人們使用他們的技能，而且還阻礙了甚至是最簡單的工業創新。

5. 影響經濟之因素

   The data-gathering phase of the project has been completed and now, according to Ogilvie, it is time ‘to ask the big questions’. One way to look at whether education causes economic growth is to ‘hold wealth constant’. This involves following the lives of different people with the same level of wealth over a period of time. If wealth is constant, it is possible to discover whether education was, for example, linked to the cultivation of new crops, or to the adoption of industrial innovations like sewing machines. The team will also ask what aspect of education helped people engage more with productive and innovative activities. Was it, for instance, literacy, numeracy, book ownership, years of schooling? Was there a threshold level – a tipping point – that needed to be reached to affect economic performance?

   專案的資料收集階段已經完成，據奧格爾維說，現在是 “提出大哉問” 的時候了。研究教育是否導致經濟增長的一種方法是 “保持財富不變”。這涉及到在一段時期內追蹤具有相同財富水準的不同人的生活。如果財富不變，就有可能發現，例如，教育是否與新作物的種植有關，或與採用縫紉機等工業創新有關。該小組還將探尋教育的哪一方面有助於人們更加參與生產和創新活動。例如，是識字、算術、書籍所有權、受教育年限嗎？是否有一個需要達到的門檻水準—一個轉捩點—來影響經濟表現？

6. 古學今用

   Ogilvie hopes to start finding answers to these questions over the next few years. One thing is already clear, she says: the relationship between education and economic growth is far from straightforward. ‘German-speaking central Europe is an excellent laboratory for testing theories of economic growth,’ she explains. Between 1600 and 1900, literacy rates and book ownership were high and yet the region remained poor. It was also the case that local guilds and merchant associations were extremely powerful and legislated against anything that undermined their monopolies. In villages throughout the region, guilds blocked labour migration and resisted changes that might reduce their influence.

   ‘Early findings suggest that the potential benefits of education for the economy can be held back by other barriers, and this has implications for today,’ says Ogilvie. ‘Huge amounts are spent improving education in developing countries, but this spending can fail to deliver economic growth if restrictions block people – especially women and the poor – from using their education in economically productive ways. If economic institutions are poorly set up, for instance, education can’t lead to growth.’

   奧格爾維希望在未來幾年開始找到這些問題的答案。她說，有一件事已經很清楚了：教育和經濟增長之間的關係遠不是那麼簡單的。她解釋說：“講德語的中歐是一個檢驗經濟增長理論的絕佳實驗室。” 在 1600 年至 1900 年間，識字率和圖書擁有量都很高，但該地區仍然很貧窮。還有一種情況是，當地的行會和商人協會非常強大，並對任何破壞其壟斷的行為進行立法。在整個地區的村莊裡，行會阻止勞動力遷移，並抵制可能削弱其影響力的變革。

   “早期的研究結果表明，教育對經濟的潛在好處可能受到其他障礙的阻礙，這對今天有影響，” 奧格爾維說。在發展中國家，大量的資金被用於改善教育，但如果各種限制阻礙了人們—尤其是婦女和窮人—以具有經濟效益的方式使用他們的教育，這種支出可能無法實現經濟增長。例如，如果經濟體制建立得不好，教育就無法造就成長。