The Concentration of investment in education in the US (1970-2018)

Cécile Bonneau
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Cécile Bonneau: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

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Abstract: This study aims to analyse the concentration of investment in education in the US from 1970 to 2017. I study both the distribution of spending for K-12 and Higher Education and then present different scenarios to combine both inequalities. Even if the distribution of education spending is less unequal than the one of income or even wages, these spending are still very unequally distributed and, as for income and wages, inequalities have significantly increased over the past four decades, due to spending in higher education. Indeed, the top 10% of students for whom the most is spent used to have 28% of the overall amount of instructional expenditure in 1970 and now have more than 36%. Inequalities in educational investments are coming from two sources: unequal length of studies and unequal spending per grade, the latter being the main driver of the concentration observed. As a matter of fact, if everyone were to have the same educational attainment, the level of inequalities would almost be the same. The only way to reduce significantly the concentration in educational spending would be to equalize spending within each grade across districts and universities.

Keywords: School Finance; investment in education; History of Education; Government expenditure on Education; United States; World Inequality Lab (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
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