Education finance reform and investment in human capital:: lessons from California

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fernández, R; Rogerson, R
• 署名单位: New York University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(99)00046-8
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 327-350
• 关键词: education finance reform; human capital; california

摘要

This paper examines the effect of different education financing systems on the level and distribution of resources devoted to public education. Pie focus on California, which in the 1970's was transformed from a foundation system of mixed local and state financing to one of effectively pure state finance and subsequently saw its funding of public education fall between 10 and 15% relative to the rest of the US. We show that a simple political economy model of public finance can account for the balk of this drop. We find that while the distribution of spending became more equal, this was mainly at the cost of a large reduction in spending in the wealthier communities with little increase for the poorer districts. Our calibrated model implies that there is no simple trade-off between equity;and resources; we show that if California had moved to the opposite extreme and abolished state aid altogether, funding for public education would also have dropped by almost 10%. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.