Precarious Slopes? The Great Recession, Federal Stimulus, and New Jersey Schools

45 Pages Posted: 22 Jan 2012

See all articles by Rajashri Chakrabarti

Rajashri Chakrabarti

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Sarah Sutherland

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Date Written: January 1, 2012

Abstract

While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions,on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools have a fundamental role in fostering human capital formation and economic growth. We exploit unique panel data and trend shift analysis to analyze how New Jersey school finances were affected during the Great Recession and the ARRA federal stimulus period. Our results show strong evidence of downward shifts in both revenue and expenditure following the recession. Federal stimulus seemed to have helped in 2010, however both revenue and expenditure still declined. While total revenue declined, the various components of revenue did not witness symmetric changes. The infusion of funds with the federal stimulus occurred simultaneously with statistically and economically significant cuts in state and local financing, especially the former. Our results also show a compositional shift in expenditures in favor of categories that are linked most closely to instruction, while several noninstruction categories including transportation and utilities declined. Interestingly, budgetary stress seems to have led to significant lay-offs for untenured teachers, leading to a rightward shift of the teacher salary and experience distributions. Heterogeneity analysis shows that high poverty and urban districts sustained the largest falls in the post-recession era, with Abbott districts specifically falling the furthest from prerecession trends. Of importance, the Abbott districts were the only group in our expansive analysis to show statistically significant negative shifts in instructional expenditure even with the federal stimulus. The findings of this paper contribute valuable insight regarding schools’ financial situations during recession and can serve as a guide to aid future policy decisions.

Keywords: school finance, Recession, ARRA, federal stimulus, Abbott Districts

JEL Classification: H4, I21, I28

Suggested Citation

Chakrabarti, Rajashri and Sutherland, Sarah, Precarious Slopes? The Great Recession, Federal Stimulus, and New Jersey Schools (January 1, 2012). FRB of New York Staff Report No. 538, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1989137 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1989137

Rajashri Chakrabarti (Contact Author)

Federal Reserve Bank of New York ( email )

33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045
United States

HOME PAGE: http://nyfedeconomists.org/chakrabarti

Sarah Sutherland

Federal Reserve Bank of New York ( email )

33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045
United States

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