Aging Population and Education Finance

Mark Gradstein () and Michael Kaganovich ()

No 3950, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Conventional wisdom suggests that aging of population will increase political pressure to tilt the composition of social spending in favour of the elderly, while potentially sacrificing other publicly provided goods such as education. This view seems to be supported by recent empirical findings that per child public education spending tends to be lower in US jurisdictions with higher fraction of elderly residents. Do these cross-sectional findings also carry the dynamic implication that longevity will lead over time to waning political support for funding of public education? This Paper challenges such implication. We present a model that is consistent with the aforementioned cross-sectional regressions yet predicts an overall positive impact of increasing longevity on public education funding and economic growth.

Keywords: local public funding of education; overlapping generations; political equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D99 H52 H73 I22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-06
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP3950.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Aging population and education finance (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3950

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP3950.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().