Sustainability of the Romanian Social Security System. The Burden of Education

Sustainability of the Social Security Systems is dependant on a large variety of factors of which, directly connected with the general economic growth, the human capital proved to have a decisive and direct influence. Internationally synchronized Education should, in this context, normally be the engine behind the social security system’s vehicle. In the conditions of the international mobility of the labor forces, there is a complex set of incentives to provide an international applicability of a given type of education. However, there is a specific cost of providing such education for the countries that face an education outsourcing. In such a scenario, education may show more attributes of breaks instead of an engine pushing forward the system as a whole, giving new perspectives to the “brain-drain brain-gain” conundrum. In the conditions of the international mobility of the labor forces, there is a complex set of incentives to provide an international applicability of a given type of education. But there is a specific cost of providing such education for the countries that face an education outsourcing. The objective of this study is to provide an assessment of such cost for an emerging economy like the Romanian one. We are adopting a modified version of the analytical framework proposed by Poutvaara (2005). This framework describes the link between public education and migration, and can be used to test the migration incentives from Romania to EU15 countries. Further, we estimate the loss of Romanian economy as a result of such a process using a dataset for a 7 year period prior and post- Romanian accession to EU in 2007. Our results suggest that the case of Romanian emigration falls within the frame model’s variant of an asymmetric federation. Since the primary and secondary education has no particular country specific orientation and the tertiary public education is organized according to Bologna provisions and requirements, the education provided by the Romanian public system can be considered as being internationally applicable with respect to EU15 countries. The cost of emigration is estimated as a function of public education expenses, wage taxes and the taxes on final consumption per capita not recovered from or lost due to emigration. An interpretation of the figures is provided and further research directions are suggested. The outcome of the proposed analysis can serve to a better-structured design of the public policies for education considering the societal characteristics of Romania in the context of European Union integration.