TY - BOOK ID - 135341022 TI - Distributional Effects of Educational Improvements : Are we using the Wrong Model? AU - Bourguignon, Francois AU - Rogers, F. Halsey PY - 2007 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Access to Finance KW - Capital Markets KW - Credit Markets KW - Debt Markets KW - Developing Countries KW - Economic Development KW - Economic Theory and Research KW - Education for All KW - Expenditure KW - Expenditures KW - Finance and Financial Sector Development KW - Human Capital KW - Human Development KW - International Bank KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Public Sector Expenditure Analysis and Management KW - Public Spending UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135341022 AB - Measuring the incidence of public spending in education requires an intergenerational framework distinguishing between what current and future generations - that is, parents and children - give and receive. In standard distributional incidence analysis, households are assumed to receive a benefit equal to what is spent on their children enrolled in the public schooling system and, implicitly, to pay a fee proportional to their income. This paper shows that, in an intergenerational framework, this is equivalent to assuming perfectly altruistic individuals, in the sense of the dynastic model, and perfect capital markets. But in practice, credit markets are imperfect and poor households cannot borrow against the future income of their children. The authors show that under such circumstances, standard distributional incidence analysis may greatly over-estimate the progressivity of public spending in education: educational improvements that are progressive in the long-run steady state may actually be regressive for the current generation of poor adults. This is especially true where service delivery in education is highly inefficient - as it is in poor districts of many developing countries - so that the educational benefits received are relatively low in comparison with the cost of public spending. The results have implications for both policy measures and analytical approaches. ER -