Inequality and higher education in Italy The distributive impact of fees and subsidies to academics

Daniele Pacifico ()

Center for the Analysis of Public Policies (CAPP) from Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi"

Abstract: In this paper we evaluate in monetary terms the benefits from attending a post-secondary degree in an Italian university. We also propose a microsimulation model that takes into account the spatial distribution of scholarships, fees and other monetary and in-kind services related to the university sector. In this way, it is possible to obtain a good approximation of the real net benefit gained from attending a post-secondary Italian degree and to study its distributive impact on both the users and the whole Italian population. We will provide evidence that the benefits from public higher education have universalistic features. However, the tax-system that is applied by each university is slightly regressive whilst subsidies have a high potential in terms of redistribution, even though the allocated funds are not enough to create any significant effect. Given these results, a new tax-policy is proposed to overcome some of the problems of the present system.

Keywords: microsimulation; inequality; in-kind benefits; higher education; university; tuition fees; subsidy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 D31 H23 H42 H52 I23 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mod:cappmo:0069

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