As developing countries continue to battle poverty despite strong economic growth, understanding the relationship between equity and human development becomes increasingly important. In this context, equity is not equivalent to equality for any specific outcome such as health status, education or income. It is an objective ideal whereby people's achievements are increasingly dependent upon personal effort, choice and initiative rather than predetermined characteristics such as race, gender and socioeconomic background. As such, equity becomes an issue of moral equality based on the belief that people should be treated as equals, with equal access to life chances. This ideal pursues equal access to public services, infrastructure and rights for all citizens, including the right to education. While evidence suggests that education builds healthier, richer, more equitable societies, research on this has focused predominantly on primary and secondary schooling. The authors of this paper begin with an extensive review of existing research and relevant literature. In the second part of their article, they then report on their own study which furthers the discussion by exploring connections between tertiary education and development using equity as a reflection of human development--a holistic extension of economic development. After extracting relevant data from a number of available world reports by the United Nations, the World Bank and other organisations, they carried out a cross-national statistical analysis designed to examine the relationship between tertiary enrolment levels and a composite equity variable. Their results indicate a strong association between higher post-secondary education levels and higher levels of social equity.