Abstract
Availability of free public education induces a transfer in kind among households with school age children. We provide evidence of the redistributive character of public education provision. We estimate structural quantile treatment effects of household income on the distribution of expected educational transfers in kind. Under the assumption that education quality is a normal good, better services (ancillary to the core education mission) supplied by private schools increase quality therein and reduce the incentives for wealthy households to enroll in public education. Because of these incentives, rich families benefit less from educational transfers in kind and the public education system is redistributive. Using household survey data from Italy, we find that an increase in net income reduces the value of the expected educational in kind transfers for compulsory education.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Rolf Aaberge, Erich Battistin, Lorenzo Cappellari, Daniele Checchi, Carlo Fiorio, Alessio Fusco, Paolo Ghinetti, Gyorgy Gyomai, Christine Le Clainche, Arnaud Lefranc, Javier Olivera, Enrico Rettore, Jonah Rockoff, Philippe Van Kerm, Francesca Zantomio, Claudio Zoli, two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor for valuable comments. We thank participants at conferences and seminars held at Aix-en-Provence (LAGV), Bari (ECINEQ), Canazei IT Winter School; IRVAPP, LISER, Milano Bicocca, Moncalieri (GRASS VIII), Novara, Pavia, Rotterdam (IARIW) and Torino (Department of Economics and Statistics) for useful comments. We also thank Carlo Fiorio for kindly providing us data on gross income and personal income taxes. We are fully responsible for all errors. D. Sonedda and G. Casalone gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Università del Piemonte Orientale .
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Andreoli, F., Casalone, G. & Sonedda, D. Public education provision, private schooling and income redistribution. J Econ Inequal 16, 553–582 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-018-9393-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-018-9393-y