The Impact of School Spending on Civic Engagement: Evidence from School Finance Reforms

Erdal Asker, Eric Brunner () and Stephen Ross
Additional contact information
Erdal Asker: Georgia Institute of Technology

No 2022-16, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: A primary rationale for public provision of K-12 education and state financing of school spending is that education fosters civic engagement and the development of social capital. However, limited evidence exists on whether and how school spending affects civic engagement. Virtually all studies focus on the impact of educational attainment (as opposed to school spending) on political activity. We provide the first causal evidence on how school spending affects volunteerism as well as voting. The court-ordered and legislative school finance reforms that occurred throughout the United States over recent decades led to large and plausibly exogenous shocks to K-12 school spending. We estimate difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) models to isolate the causal impact of school spending on civic engagement. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS), and the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS), we find that exogenous increases in school spending led to increases in the probability that young adults volunteer and the amount of time they spend volunteering. In contrast, we find little evidence that school spending impacts voting. Consistent with prior studies, we find that increases in school spending increase high school graduation and college attendance.

Keywords: Civic Engagement; Education Spending; Volunteerism; Voting; School Finance Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 H72 I22 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2022-16.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of School Spending on Civic Engagement: Evidence from School Finance Reforms (2022)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2022-16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics University of Connecticut 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark McConnel ().