Abstract
Economic recessions are a cyclical phenomena that affects our lives in many ways. In this chapter, I empirically estimate the cross-national effects of economic recession on school resources by assembing a country-level panel dataset using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA ) data. First, I find that while many OECD countries increased stimulus spending in education sectors as a whole, not all levels of education have benefited. Second, empirical evidence shows that the 2008 recession negatively influenced the direct institutional cost burden borne by government financial sources and decreased the relative amount of personnel resources available. Third, I find positive association between economic declines and non-personnel school resource investments. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Data for Luxemburg in 2012 is missing, but the decreasing trend in funding since 2008 indicates that the predicted value, based on trendline, to be likely lower than the reference level.
- 2.
There are 18 countries with available data in 2012, of which 11 have values below reference level.
- 3.
Hereinafter, school resources refer exclusively to resources that come from government sources.
- 4.
This measure is derived from Question 3 on the PISA school questionnaire.
- 5.
Student-to-teacher ratio (STRATIO) and computer-to-school-size ratio (RATCOMP) are both PISA derived variables.
- 6.
Unemployment rate information, by-country-by-year, is obtained from the World Bank database.
- 7.
As an example, the unstandardized coeeficient β should be formally interpretted as β% increase in the dependent variable that is associated with 1% increase in the independent variable.
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Liu, J. (2018). Economic Recession and School Finance: A Cross-National Study. In: BenDavid-Hadar, I. (eds) Education Finance, Equality, and Equity. Education, Equity, Economy, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90388-0_6
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