A Systems Theoretic Analysis Of The Quantitative Interplay Between Econometrics And Education

Income/expenditures, individual expenditures such as education, and performance in schools all relate to systems with defined inputs and outputs and have been formally modeled in accordance with a systems theoretic approach. The Engel’s curves of expenditures on commodities from the Indian National Sample Survey Organization data was hyperbolic limited by a perceived ‘time constant’ associated with commodities while the preferences themselves are ordered hierarchically. School participation (dropouts) as a function of parental income based on available Brazilian data also shows a hierarchical hyperbolic relationship, thereby proving the nature of hierarchy in a naturally ordinal commodity - education. Since the socio-economic influences skew school performance in year-end examinations that demand cramming, retention over the years was tested in a school with a small cross section of 9th grade students uniformly distributed for their previous year’s school grades. The startling finding was that retention was drastically falling with years of schooling towards more recent years, which cannot be detected by the usual school tests, and depends on the subjects as taught. The remedial measures based on a large scale testing and confirmation of results would considerably benefit by a continuation of systems approach.