Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the concomitantly increasing proportion of elderly in the population can influence the propensity of politicians to spend on education. Using a panel of the Swiss Cantons for the period from 1990 to 2002, we find that the education system has exhibited little elasticity in adjusting to changes in the school-age population, and that the share of the elderly population has a significantly negative influence on the willingness to spend on public education.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1555.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
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