Nuestra NEBRIJA 29 abril 2019

50 Article Santiago Budría. Principal Investigator at the School of Social Sciences, Nebrija University. The world has experienced unprecedented edu- cational progress in recent decades. If in 1980 approximately 175 million people had university studies, today the figure is almost 850 million. In the same period, the edu- cational differential between women and men, always favo- rable to the latter, was gradua- lly reduced until today, when it practically reaches parity in developed countries and South America. Part of this progress was made thanks to public policies desig- ned to favor the access of children and young people to all sections of the educational cycle. People with studies are more productive, find work faster, earn more money, live longer, have more assets and pay more taxes, thus contribu- ting to generating resources that can later be used in investment and redistribution policies. Education offers, in addition, excellent insuran- ce against unemployment and job insecurity, one of the structural problems that traditionally has most worried Spaniards. Some data are quite illustrative. People with university studies live an average of 5 years lon- ger than the rest. This differen- tial can reach 10 years in some Eastern European countries (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary), and is higher among men than among women in the OECD. That is to say, education is an excellent health insurance. On the other hand, and although the data vary considerably between countries, workers with undergraduate and postgraduate T he existing inequality among the most qualified has increased in recent years If we classify the population according to their educational level, we find that the greatest inequalities of salary and income occur, precisely, in the group of the most qualified. Education and inequality