IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v16y2024i1p412-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Impacts Can We Expect from School Spending Policy? Evidence from Evaluations in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • C. Kirabo Jackson
  • Claire L. Mackevicius

Abstract

We conduct meta-analysis on a comprehensive set of studies of the impacts of US K-12 public school spending on student outcomes—estimating average marginal impacts and heterogeneity across contexts. On average, a policy increasing spending by $1,000 per pupil for four years improves test scores by 0.0316σ and college-going by 2.8 pp. Moving beyond averages, we use estimates of heterogeneity and observable policy differences to produce informative probability distributions of policy effects. Effects are smaller for economically advantaged populations, marginal effects of capital spending are similar to noncapital, and effects are similar across baseline spending levels and geography. Confounding and publication biases are minimal.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Kirabo Jackson & Claire L. Mackevicius, 2024. "What Impacts Can We Expect from School Spending Policy? Evidence from Evaluations in the United States," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 412-446, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:16:y:2024:i:1:p:412-46
    DOI: 10.1257/app.20220279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220279
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E182042V1
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220279.appx
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220279.slds
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20220279.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/app.20220279?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:16:y:2024:i:1:p:412-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.