Is buying education fair? :Cross national analysis on public opinion on private expenditure on education

• In Event: Education, prestige and funding policies in education

Proposal

This paper explores how individual sociodemographic factors and a national-level factor shape public opinion on privatization of education. Building on the previous studies using public opinion surveys, this study examines what individual and national level predictors determine people’s perception of the fairness of private expenditure on education using the international public opinion survey, International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Social Inequality 2019.
This paper has the following research questions. RQ1. What sociodemographic factors predict citizens' perception of privatization of education? RQ2. Does government spending on education predict citizens’ perception of privatization of education? Research Question 1 was developed drawing on the previous research on public opinion that used the utilitarianism theory in which socioeconomic and sociodemographic characteristics of citizens shape their attitude towards a policy by placing citizens in different positions in terms of the benefits they can receive from a policy (Durant & Legge, 2001). Furthermore, using the Israeli ISSP data, Levi and Zehavi (2022) suggest identity such as the level of religiosity shapes public attitude towards privatization. Therefore, this study includes the degree of religiosity as a sociodemographic factor. Research Question 2 was developed based on the prior study that more public spending on the sector brings the public’s negative attitude towards privatization (Battaglio & Legge, 2008). Hence, the study includes the government’s expenditure on education as a national-level factor.
This study uses ISSP Social Inequality 2019 data. 29 countries participated in the 2019 survey and the participating countries include countries from all continents. Since Slovenia does not have a questionnaire item asking about respondents’ social class, Slovenia is excluded from this study. Thus, 28 countries are included in the analysis and the sample in this study is 37,564 after deleting missing observations. As this study is a cross-national analysis, the study employs multilevel regression analysis. This study has one dependent variable that is related to the public perception of fairness of private expenditure on education, nine individual-level independent variables, and one national-level independent variable. The main outcome variable derives from a questionnaire item: “Is it just or unjust – right or wrong – that people with higher incomes can buy better education for their children than people with lower incomes?” Nine individual-level independent variables include age, sex, class, the number of years persons spent in school, income security, location, the degree of religiosity, employment status (employed or unemployed), and persons’ attitudes towards government responsibility. One national-level independent variable is the government’s expenditure on education (% of GDP) derived from World Bank data.
Preliminary findings that are obtained after running analysis only including individual-level predictors show that all the individual-level predictors are statistically significant. Interestingly, location and the level of religiosity are the only predictors that are positively associated with justifying that people with higher incomes can buy better education. To put this into words, people who are more religious and are in urban areas are more likely to justify the idea that people with higher incomes can buy better education than people with lower incomes, which is consistent with the findings from prior research (Durant & Legge, 2001; Levi & Zehavi, 2022). In contrast, age, sex, class, the number of years persons spent in school, income security, employment status (employed or unemployed), and persons’ attitude toward government responsibility are negatively associated with the idea of justifying people with high-income access to better education. People who are older, female, unemployed, more educated, and are identified as higher social class, have more income insecurity, and those who think the government should be responsible for income gaps are likely to perceive the idea of people with higher income accessing better education as unjust. These findings are mixed in terms of consistency with prior research findings. Especially, the results that those who are from advantageous backgrounds, more educated, and higher social class view wealthier people having better access to better education as unjust are opposite from the utilitarianism theory. These results may change after adding a national-level predictor or employing more sophisticated missing data handling, especially multiple imputations.
Privatization of education is strongly tied to digitalization of education, which is the CIES 2025 conference theme. Digitalization in education indeed promotes privatization of education by allowing private sectors to develop digitized textbooks and learning materials (Grimaldi, 2012). Therefore, this study contributes to enriching dialogue on digitalization of education in relation to privatization of education by exploring public opinion on privatization of education. Furthermore, there is a scarcity of studies on public opinion on privatization despite the growing influence of privatization not just limited to education (Durant & Legge, 2001), this study will provide a meaningful starting point to discuss what the public thinks about privatization in education.

Author

• Hinako Miyazaki, Michigan State University