Income Distribution and Public Education: A Dynamic Quantitative Evaluation of School Finance Reform / Raquel Fernandez, Richard Rogerson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fernandez, Raquel.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rogerson, Richard.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w4883.

NBER working paper series no. w4883

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Income Distribution and Public Education

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1994.

Summary:

Many states have or are considering implementing school finance reforms aimed at lessening inequality in the provision of public education across communities. These reforms will tend to have complicated aggregate effects on income distribution, intergenerational income mobility, and welfare. In order to analyze the potential effects of such reforms, this paper constructs a dynamic general equilibrium model of public education provision, calibrates it using US data, and examines the quantitative effects of a major school finance reform. The policy reform examined is a change from a system of pure local finance to one in which all funding is done at the federal level and expenditures per student are equal across communities. We find that this policy increases average income and total spending on education as a fraction of income. Moreover, there are large welfare gains associated with this policy; steady-state welfare increases by 3.2% of steady-state income.

Notes:

Print version record

October 1994.