This kind of income can be divided into social education income and personal education income according to different subjects. Or the social and economic benefits of education and the personal economic benefits of education. The social benefit of education refers to the part of the national economic growth in a certain period that can be attributed to the national (or social) education investment; Personal education income refers to the part of personal income growth that can be attributed to personal education investment.
The economic benefit of education is different from the efficiency of education. The former reflects the comparative relationship between indirect output and input of education, while the latter reflects the comparative relationship between direct output and input of education. This is because educational activities are different from economic activities, and their output is divided into direct output and indirect output.
The direct output of educational activities refers to the improvement of the working ability of the educated, which is usually manifested in the laborers and professionals with different proficiency trained by schools at all levels. The indirect output of education refers to the growth of national income (gross national product) or personal income brought by these workers and professionals after entering the social and economic fields. In China's education and school management, educational efficiency and educational economic benefits are often confused, and educational economic benefits are regarded as educational efficiency. For example, "improving the economic efficiency of education" and "improving the efficiency of running schools" means improving the efficiency of resource utilization in education or schools, which is what we usually say, training better and more students with less investment in education. In addition, it should be noted that education not only has economic benefits, but also has huge non-economic benefits, including society and educated individuals and families.
In educational economics, only the economic benefits of education are discussed, while the non-economic benefits of education are studied by other disciplines such as educational sociology.