In the United States, 7% of students can be considered resilient, in the sense that they come from the 25% of the most socio-economically disadvantaged students but nevertheless perform much belter than would be predicted based on their socio-economic background (7% is also the average in the OECD) (Figure 2.7). However, in Korea, Hong Kong-China and Shanghai-China, the share of disadvantaged students who excel at school despite their disadvantaged background is about twice as high. Using economic modelling to relate cognitive skills - as measured by PISA and other international instruments - to economic growth shows (with some caveats) that even smal I improvements in the skills of a nation's labour force can have large impacts on that country's future well-being. Bringing the United States up to the average performance of Finland, the best-performing education system among OECD countries, could result in gains in the order of USD 103 trillion.