Social Spending and Educational Inequality in Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development Nations

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Money, Aid, and Education

Abstract

US researchers consistently find that non-school factors influence academic achievement more than in-school factors, but this is not true in all countries. Many theories exist as to why both these influences and educational inequality differ across countries. We seek to replicate the findings of Bradley et. al., (2011) – that higher social spending relative to health care spending was associated with better health outcomes across OECD nations – in a different setting. We ask whether countries that spend more on social programs relative to education have lower educational inequality. We find that higher social spending is associated with higher educational inequality but lower income inequality across OECD nations and discuss how narrower measures of social spending could change these results.

Authors

• Corey Bunje Bower, SUNY - Buffalo

• Kerri Tobin, Marywood University