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To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy

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Author Info
David de la Croix
Matthias Doepke

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Abstract

The governments of nearly all countries are major providers of primary and secondary education to their citizens. In some countries, however, public schools coexist with private schools, while in others the government is the sole provider of education. In this study, we ask why different societies make different choices regarding the mix of private and public schooling. We develop a theory which integrates private education and fertility decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures. In a given political environment, high income inequality leads to more private education, as rich people opt out of the public system. More private education, in turn, results in an improved quality of public education, because public spending can be concentrated on fewer students. Comparing across political systems, we find that concentration of political power can lead to multiple equilibria in the determination of public education spending. The main predictions of the theory are consistent with state-level and micro data from the United States as well as cross-country evidence from the PISA study.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13319.

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Date of creation: Aug 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13319

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance
O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

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Cited by:
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  1. Masako Kimura & Daishin Yasui, 2008. "Public Provision of Private Child Goods," KIER Working Papers 662, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  2. Sylvain Dessy & Tiana Rambeloma, 2009. "Immigration Policy, Remittances, and Growth in the Migrant-Sending Country," Cahiers de recherche 0915, CIRPEE. [Downloadable!]
  3. Ryuichi Tanaka, 2004. "On the Costs and Benefits of a Mixed Educational Regime," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 470, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
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