[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28517.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Distribution of School Spending Impacts

Author

Listed:
  • C. Kirabo Jackson
  • Claire Mackevicius
Abstract
We examine all known “credibly causal” studies to explore the distribution of the causal effects of public K-12 school spending on student outcomes in the United States. For each of the 31 included studies, we compute the same marginal spending effect parameter estimate. Precision-weighted method of moments estimates indicate that, on average, a $1000 increase in per-pupil public school spending (for four years) increases test scores by 0.0352σ, high school graduation by 1.92 percentage points, and college-going by 2.65 percentage points. These pooled averages are significant at the 0.0001 level. The benefits to marginal capital spending increases take about five years to materialize, and are about half as large as (and less consistently positive than) those of non-capital-specific spending increases. The marginal spending impacts for all spending types are less pronounced for economically advantaged populations—though not statistically significantly so. Average impacts are similar across a wide range of baseline spending levels and geographic characteristics—providing little evidence of diminishing marginal returns at current spending levels. To assuage concerns that pooled averages aggregate selection or confounding biases across studies, we use a meta-regression-based method that tests for, and removes, certain biases in the reported effects. This approach is straightforward and can remove biases in meta-analyses where the parameter of interest is a ratio, slope, or elasticity. We fail to reject that the meta-analytic averages are unbiased. Moreover, policies that generate larger increases in per-pupil spending tend to generate larger improvements in outcomes, in line with the pooled average. To speak to generalizability, we estimate the variability across studies attributable to effect heterogeneity (as opposed to sampling variability). This heterogeneity explains between 76 and 88 percent of the variation across studies. Estimates of heterogeneity allow us to provide a range of likely policy impacts. Our estimates suggest that a policy that increases per-pupil spending for four years will improve test scores and/or educational attainment over 90 percent of the time. We find evidence of small possible publication bias among very imprecise studies, but show that any effects on our precision-weighted estimates are minimal.

Suggested Citation

  • C. Kirabo Jackson & Claire Mackevicius, 2021. "The Distribution of School Spending Impacts," NBER Working Papers 28517, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28517
    Note: CH ED LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28517.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan & Steven N. Durlauf, 2022. "The Great Gatsby Curve," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 571-605, August.
    2. Eric Chyn & Lawrence F. Katz, 2021. "Neighborhoods Matter: Assessing the Evidence for Place Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 197-222, Fall.
    3. Jo Blanden & Matthias Doepke & Jan Stuhler, 2022. "Education inequality," CEP Discussion Papers dp1849, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Anand, Gautam & Atluri, Aishwarya & Crawfurd, Lee & Pugatch, Todd & Sheth, Ketki, 2023. "Improving school management in low and middle income countries: A systematic review," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    5. Gregory Gilpin & Ezra Karger & Peter Nencka, 2024. "The Returns to Public Library Investment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 78-109, May.
    6. Dirk Krueger & Alexander Ludwig & Irina Popova, 2024. "Shaping Inequality and Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty: Free College or Better Schools," NBER Working Papers 32467, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. María Orduz, 2022. "Effect of educational spending on academic performance under different institutional arrangements," Documentos CEDE 20224, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    8. Nicolai T. Borgen & Lars J. Kirkebøen & Andreas Kotsadam & Oddbjørn Raaum, 2022. "Do funds for more teachers improve student outcomes?," Discussion Papers 982, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    9. Josh B. McGee, 2023. "Yes, money matters, but the details can make all the difference," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 1125-1132, September.
    10. Dalane, Kari & Marcotte, Dave E., 2021. "Charter Schools and the Segregation of Students by Income," IZA Discussion Papers 14280, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. David Card & Leah Clark & Ciprian Domnisoru & Lowell Taylor, 2024. "School Equalization in the Shadow of Jim Crow: Causes and Consequences of Resource Disparity in Mississippi circa 1940," NBER Working Papers 32496, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Acton, Riley & Orr, Cody & Rogers, Salem, 2023. "Returns to School Spending in Rural America: Evidence from Wisconsin's Sparsity Aid Program," IZA Discussion Papers 15915, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Brunner, Eric & Hoen, Ben & Hyman, Joshua, 2022. "School district revenue shocks, resource allocations, and student achievement: Evidence from the universe of U.S. wind energy installations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    14. Markussen, Simen & Røed, Knut, 2023. "The rising influence of family background on early school performance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    15. Sayoree Gooptu & Vivekananda Mukherjee, 2023. "School dropout and overeducation in developing economies: Feasibility of a budgetary solution†," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 825-852, May.
    16. Wall, Howard J., 2022. "Student Outcomes and Spending on Teachers in the Aftermath of Recession," MPRA Paper 113440, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. John Garen, 2023. "Enhancing economic freedom via school choice and competition: Have state laws been enabling enough to generate broad‐based effects?," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 82(4), pages 289-312, July.
    18. Alex Combs & Erin Troland, 2023. "The Role of Property Assessment Oversight in School Finance Inequality," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-024, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Mauricio Romero & Juan Bedoya & Monica Yanez‐Pagans & Marcela Silveyra & Rafael de Hoyos, 2024. "The effect of school grants on test scores: experimental evidence from Mexico," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(363), pages 980-995, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J58 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.