This paper examines the dynamics of the skill supply and its incidence on
economic growth in the presence of education policies. When there are
indivisibilities in the financing of human capital, small differences in the
initial distribution of skills may greatly affect the stationary
distribution: the economy may end up in a “low skill trap”, or in a high
skill equilibrium. The model implies that for some ranges of initial
distributions there will be intergenerational immobility. Finally,
cross-country differences in long-term macroeconomic adjustment to education
policies may be attributed, among other factors, to the existence of a
congestion effect in the education system.