A toolkit for assessing the directions of budget financing of education in post-crisis conditions

Public financing of education is one of the most important fiscal instruments for responding to the challenges of post-pandemic economic recovery. Investments in higher and vocational education form the basis for the growth of total factor productivity, and therefore economic growth. At the same time, in the context of austerity, which will determine the directions of the budgetary policy of developing countries in the medium term, the key directions of fiscal intensification of the factors of economic growth require identification. It is proposed to include indicators of return on investments in various levels of education to the toolkit for assessing the directions of state financing of education as one of the most important factors of post-pandemic economic recovery in conditions of austerity. Differences in estimated returns from different educational levels can be taken into account in the development of public policy for financing education. The article offers an approbation for Ukraine of the approach of the Center for European Economic Research for calculating the return on investment in higher and vocational education. A feature of the proposed approach is the ability to simulate a sufficient amount of data on revenues of individuals in conditions of limited information. The calculations in the article are based, in addition to data on the level of wages of persons with higher and vocational education, on the amount of budgetary expenditures on education throughout the course of study per student, personal income tax rates, unemployment benefits and state social assistance per person. The proposed approach makes it possible to carry out scenario estimates of the return on investment in education based on macroeconomic forecasts and taking into account changes in tax legislation. It is found that in Ukraine the return on investment in higher and vocational education corresponds to the average values of the corresponding indicators for the OECD countries. The author outlines the guidelines of the proposed methodological approach and prospective areas for its application. The publication prepared within the research project on "The Fiscal Space Development for Economic Growth" (SR No. 0119U003650).