Suburbanization, Demographic Change and the Consequences for School Finance

David Figlio and Deborah Fletcher

No 16137, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The existing literature on the relationship between the share of elderly in a community and the support for local public education has led to mixed results to date. One potential reason behind this is that the share of elderly in a community is endogenous, and it is very difficult to disentangle the effects of individuals aging in place from that of dynamic Tiebout sorting. The point of this paper is to carefully document the degree to which aging in place has occurred in the American suburbs, and to estimate the degree to which it has influenced school finance once the initial settlers of these suburbs were no longer the parents of school-aged children. We hand-match data from the 1950 and 1960 Censuses of Population and Housing to more recent data to link postwar suburban development to later school finance. Using a novel method for identifying the causal effects of aging in place, we find that the share of elderly adults who age in place is negatively related to the level of support for public schooling, and that this is particularly true for school districts in metropolitan areas where the school-aged population is more heavily nonwhite relative to the elderly population.

JEL-codes: H41 H75 H77 I20 I22 J1 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-06
Note: AG CH ED PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Figlio, David N. & Fletcher, Deborah, 2012. "Suburbanization, demographic change and the consequences for school finance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1144-1153.
Published as Suburbanization, Demographic Change and the Consequences for School Finance , David N. Figlio, Deborah Fletcher. in Fiscal Federalism , Cullen and Gordon. 2012

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Related works:
Journal Article: Suburbanization, demographic change and the consequences for school finance (2012)
Chapter: Suburbanization, Demographic Change and the Consequences for School Finance (2010)
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