The Demographics of Innovation

Chapter 10India

Let us start our analysis of India by discussing Figure 10.1, which shows the number of foreign PhD students in U.S. graduate schools by their country of origin. A country's share of foreign PhDs in U.S. graduate schools is a good proxy of the relative strength of human capital in each country. The figure shows that the number of doctorates awarded to Chinese students is almost twice the number awarded to European students.

Figure 10.1 Non-U.S. citizens awarded doctorates in science and engineering by country of citizenship, 2010

Note: A total of 25 degrees were awarded to non-U.S. citizens from unknown countries.

Data Source: National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2009–10.

The number of Indian students is much bigger than those of any single other country, except for China; even bigger than Europe and non-U.S. America. Using this as a predictor for future GDP, India's innovation should rank only after that of China and the United States. After a country reaches the middle-income level, its ability to move further up to the high-income level depends on its innovation capacity, which is determined by the size and quality of human capital, so this graph should be a predictor of the distribution of the GDP of the major countries in the future.

Other economists have made the same projection. Bloomberg predicts that the Indian economy ...