Income Inequality and Education
A Human Capital Inequality and the Composition of Education Expenditure
Hwang, Jinyoung. (2011). A cross-country analysis of human capital inequality and the composition of education expenditure. European Journal of Social Sciences, 24 (1):
According to Hwang (2011), it has been observed in previous literature that substantially inequitable societies in terms of income distribution tend to spend more on tertiary education (university-level education) than lower-level education. "Wealth distribution is a plausible explanation for the distributional bias of government expenditure on education, as long as the distribution of wealth determines the existence and number of organized group[s] in an economy" (Hwang 2011: 97). This discrepancy could be explained by the fact that the rich tend to send their children to private schools not subsidized by the state for lower-level education, or to better-funded, locally funded secondary institutions and thus only need substantial federal support for education at the tertiary level. The wealthier and more powerful members of
Although subsidizing lower-level education could substantially benefit the poor, those who could benefit the most from education are denied this 'leg up' into the middle or upper classes.
Hwang's hypothesis was that "countries with greater wealth inequalities occasionally expand more resources on tertiary education than on primary or secondary education" (Hwang 2011: 97). Hwang focused on inequities in distribution of wealth, versus distribution of land and other resources, in contrast to previous studies. To prove this thesis, 81 countries over five-year intervals from 1975 to 2000 were assessed in terms of their expenditures on education in terms of spending on tertiary education vs. other types of education as a percentage of GDP per capita, using regression analysis (Hwang 2011: 97-98). Hwang did not differentiate the countries according to 'types' other than wealth distribution. The…
