 Inequality in Incomes and Access to Education. A Cross-Country Analysis (1960-90)No 21, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics Abstract: In the current debate on the relationship between inequality in income distribution and growth one of the possible link works through the access to education. After reviewing this debate, a formal model show how the imperfection of financial markets makes educational choices dependent on the distribution of family incomes. This leads to two testable predictions in the analysis of aggregate data on school enrolments: a negative (linear) dependence on Gini concentration index on incomes distribution; and a positive dependence on public resources invested in education and/or on skill premium in the labour market. This predictions are then tested on a (unbalanced) panel of 102 countries for the period 1960-90. The main findings of this analysis are that, once we control for the degree of development with the (log of) per capita output, financial constraints seem mainly relevant in limiting the access to secondary education. However, when considering gender differences, there is evidence that female participation to education is more strongly conditioned by family wealth, starting from primary education. On the contrary there is no clear evidence of a relevant impact of invested resources, but at the tertiary level. Pages: 38 pages Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mib:wpaper:21 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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