To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy

de la Croix, David; Doepke, Matthias

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To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy

CORE Discussion Paper No. 2003/82

39 Pages Posted: 25 May 2007

See all articles by David de la Croix

David de la Croix

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES); Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Matthias Doepke

Northwestern University - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

There are 4 versions of this paper

Date Written: November 2003

Abstract

In most democracies, the majority of education expenditures is financed by the government. In non-democracies, we observe a wide variation in the mix of public and private funding of education. In addition, countries with high inequality tend to rely more heavily on private schooling. We develop a theory which integrates private decision on education and fertility with voting on public education expenditures. The theory is able to account for the facts mentioned above. Countries with high inequality exhibit more private education expenditures since rich people opt out of the public system. In non-democracies, concentration of political power leads to multiple equilibria in the determination of public education spending.

Keywords: Education funding, Inequality, Voting, Political Power, Segregation

JEL Classification: D72, I21, H42, E62

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

de la Croix, David and Doepke, Matthias, To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy (November 2003). CORE Discussion Paper No. 2003/82, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=988634