Are Public Subsidies to Higher Education Regressive ?

William Johnson

Virginia Economics Online Papers from University of Virginia, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper estimates the dollar amount of public higher education subsidies received by U.S. youth and examines the distribution of subsidies and the taxes which finance them across parental and student income levels. Although youths from highincome families obtain more benefit from higher education subsidies, high-income households pay sufficiently more in taxes that the net effect of the spending and associated taxation is distributionally neutral or mildly progressive. These results are robust to alternative assumptions and are consistent with Hansen and Weisbrod’s earlier celebrated findings for California, although not with the conclusions often drawn from those findings.

Keywords: : higher education; subsidy; progressivity Classification-JH23; I22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2005-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://repec.as.virginia.edu/RePEc/vir/virpap/papers/virpap365.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are Public Subsidies to Higher Education Regressive? (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vir:virpap:365

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