A recent analysis by Lee and Mason (2010) showed that the impact of spending on education is strong enough to of set the adverse effects of population aging, but this conclusion depends on the effectiveness of the investment. Figure 1.6 compares human capital spending per child and the total fertility rate for Asian economies for which estimates are available (Mason et al., 2010). The total fertility rate is the average number of births per woman over her reproductive life given current age-specific birth rates. Human capital spending is measured in a similar way as the average expenditure on health and education during childhood given current age-specific spending. To facilitate comparisons across economies at very different levels of development, human spending is expressed as a fraction of the average labor income of a working adult aged 30–49. Therefore, the highest level of human capital investment in Figure 1.6, 6.2 for Taipei, China, means that human capital spending during childhood is equal to about six years’ worth of the pre-tax labor income of a working-age adult. Note that this value includes both public and private spending on education.