Public Funding and Private Returns to Education
Public Funding and Private Returns to Education
Typically, students are assumed to decide on their optimal investment in education by weighing the costs arising from the acquisition of education with the expected benefit in terms of wages, in other words, by assessing the expected return to education. European school systems differ among other things in the extent of pupil differentiation by ability levels, in the importance of vocational relative to general education as well as in the systems of public funding and financial support for education. Such differences are expected to have repercussions on educational choices of youngsters, on the one hand, and on the return to education, on the other hand. The main objective of this project is to assess the impact of differences in the education systems on individual labour market outcome in terms of level and dispersion of returns to education. The project involves 15 European countries and addresses in particular the following issues:
- Comparative analysis of the wage and the qualification structures
- Differentiated estimation of the returns to education and their developments since the mid-1980s
- Analysis of the impact of different systems of education and public funding on the individual labour market outcome in terms of returns to education and earnings inequality
