ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

Education is a sector that requires substantial budgetary resources, but theoretically, it is often assumed to generate considerable benefits across social and economic dimensions. Analyzing the long-term impact of education finance is, therefore, indispensable both from policy and academic perspective. Nonetheless, empirical evidence on the long-term impact of education finance in South Korea remains scarce. The purpose of this study is to empirically verify the long-term causal effects of education finance and to draw meaningful policy implications regarding the legitimacy and necessity of education fiscal investment. To secure internal validity of the research, this study exploits the introduction of the Local Education Grant System in 1973 as an exogenous variation, and uses regression kink design to estimate the causal impact of education spending on long-term outcomes such as educational attainment and wages. The results show that, on average, substantial increases in education spending do not produce positive impact on long-term individual outcomes. I argue, however, that to draw externally valid conclusions regarding the benefits of education finance, more research that is based on administrative data that contain representative sample and natural experiments are necessary. Ultimately, accumulation of such studies would contribute to evidence-based decision-making regarding educational budget allocation.

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