The federal budget for 2013 and the planning period 2014-2015 has already been given the label ‘anti-social': the rising volume of budget allocations to the ‘guns' brings down that of allocations to ‘butter' – including ‘educational butter.'

This paper looks at how countries have mobilized additional resources for education and assesses their impact on access and learning outcomes, using the World Bank's new Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling measure. The paper shows that global spending on education has risen significantly over...