443 P. Tsakloglou, M. Antoninis Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452
in Greece and intra-family transfers are a common phenomenon. A problem arises in this case regarding
about 30 of the tertiary education students and a few secondary education students in our sample, who study
in cities other than the cities where their parents live and form their own households or—a few of them—live in
relatives’ households
5
. Due to inadequate information, our
methodology implies
that the
welfare level
equivalent consumption expenditure of these students is determined by the transfers they receive from their
families—in an attempt to equalise the welfare level of all family members—but the benefits of public education
transfers are captured entirely by the students themselves and are not shared with the rest of their families. In the
second part of the empirical analysis it is assumed that these transfers benefit only the students who receive
them. Hence they are added to the equivalent consump- tion expenditure of the students and comparisons are
made not between households but between members of particular age groups
6
. Comparisons of inequality before and after the trans-
fers are made using five indices of inequality; Gini, Atkinson for e 5 0.5 and e 5 2 and the two Theil
indices. These indices satisfy the basic axioms of inequality measurement symmetry, mean-independence,
population-independence and the principle of transfers
7
5
The proportion of tertiary education students who study in places other than where their families live is likely to be sub-
stantially higher, but a considerable proportion of these students were interviewed in the houses of their families during
vacation periods.
6
It has been argued that, at least the students of the post- compulsory levels of education, apart from the benefits they
receive from the state, they incur the cost of foregone labor incomes see, for example, Selden Wasylenko, 1995. Apart
from the fact that this element of private cost is outside the scope of our investigation, it was decided to ignore such effects
for two additional reasons. Firstly, the measure of resources used in our analysis equivalent household consumption
expenditure mitigates substantially such life-cycle effects and, secondly and more importantly, the rate of unemployment
among those aged 14–25 in Greece in 1988 was a staggering 29.0, or 33.9 among those aged 14–19 National Statistical
Service of Greece, 1997, pp. 114–116, thus, rendering any cor- responding calculations almost meaningless.
7
The second of these axioms, mean-independence, is pretty standard in the theory of inequality measurement but may have
serious consequences for our analysis. It states that the level of inequality must remain unchanged if the incomes of all agents
change by the same proportion thus, excluding the possibility that the value of the index may change if the incomes of the
agents are measured in dollars, pounds, drachmas, etc.. How- ever, in the framework of our analysis this axiom implies that
inequality will remain unchanged if public transfers are pro- portional to the consumption expenditures of the households—
an assumption far from uncontroversial. For this reason, in the tables of the next section we also report, apart from estimates
of inequality indices, the absolute level of public transfers.
and are sensitive to different types of transfers Cowell, 1995. The Atkinson index and the second Theil index
are relatively more sensitive to transfers close to the bot- tom of the distribution, the first Theil index more sensi-
tive to transfers close to the top of the distribution and the Gini index to transfers close to the middle of the
distribution. Hence, the combined use of these indices satisfies a wide range of tastes regarding the responsive-
ness of an index to different types of transfers.
4. Empirical results
The estimates of Table 3 present a first attempt to examine the distributional impact of public education in
Greece. The first line reports estimates related to the dis- tribution of equivalent consumption expenditure when
public transfers in the domain of education are not taken into account. The first five cells report the mean monthly
consumption expenditure not equivalent consumption expenditure of the households ranked in quintiles
according to their equivalent consumption expenditure from the poorest 1 to the richest 5. Estimates of the
five aforementioned inequality indices for the distri- bution of equivalent consumption expenditure per house-
hold are reported in the last five cells.
The estimates in the first five cells of the second line represent the monetary values of the mean monthly
transfers of education services from the state to the households belonging to the corresponding quintiles in
both absolute terms and in parentheses as a percentage of the mean consumption expenditure reported in the first
line of the table. The estimates in the last five cells of the second line of Table 3 are the estimates of the
inequality indices when the value of public transfers is taken into account and in parentheses the percentage
change from the corresponding indices reported in the first line of the table.
In 1988, the average Greek household received a monthly transfer-in-kind of education services valued at
6357 drachmas; an amount equivalent to 4.32 of the mean household consumption expenditure. However, the
distribution as well as the composition of this in-kind- transfer varies considerably across quintiles. The value
of the mean transfer received by households in the bot- tom quintile was 4711 drachmas, in the second 6368
drachmas, in the third 7739 drachmas, in the fourth 7170 drachmas and in the top quintile 5797 drachmas. The
value of the transfer is as high as 8.82 of the mean consumption expenditure of the first quintile. This per-
centage declines steadily when moving to higher quin- tiles, amounting to only 2.10 for the top quintile. When
public transfers in the field of education are taken into account, the inequality indices used in this paper decline
P. Tsakloglou,
M. Antoninis
Economics
of Education
Review 18
1999 439–452
Table 3 Distributional impact of public education in-kind transfers: Greece 1988—all households n 5 6381
Atkinson Atkinson
Bottom 2nd
3rd 4th
Top Gini
1st Theil 2nd Theil
Distribution index
index quintile
quintile quintile
quintile quintile
index index
index e 5 0.5
e 5 2 Initial distribution
53 429 93 887
133 118 179 060
275 815 0.3237
0.0843 0.3088
0.1747 0.1783
mean consumption expenditure Final distribution
4711 6368
7739 7170
5797 0.3159
0.0797 0.3019
0.1688 0.1706
mean transfer2 of mean 8.82
6.78 5.81
4.00 2.10
22.42 25.46
22.23 23.38
24.32 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus primary education transfers
1716 1871
2344 2095
1766 0.3212
0.0830 0.3049
0.1718 0.1755
mean transfer2 of mean 3.21
1.99 1.76
1.17 0.64
20.79 21.53
21.26 21.66
21.57 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus secondary education transfers
2231 3129
3522 3197
1977 0.3198
0.0825 0.3054
0.1706 0.1746
mean transfer2 of mean 4.18
3.33 2.65
1.79 0.72
21.22 22.15
21.10 22.35
22.08 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus tertiary education transfers
764 1369
1873 1879
2054 0.3234
0.0842 0.3099
0.1740 0.1784
mean transfer2 of mean 1.43
1.46 1.41
1.05 0.74
20.11 20.14
1 0.34 20.40
1 0.06 consumption expenditure
445 P. Tsakloglou, M. Antoninis Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452
between 2.23 and 5.46
8
. Hence, it can be claimed that
the Greek
public education
system reduces
inequality, at least from a static point of view
9
. Furthermore, it is interesting to examine, ceteris par-
ibus, the distributional impact of public transfers at each level of the education system primary, secondary and
tertiary. This is done in the last three lines of Table 3. The estimates of the table show that the state support to
the households belonging to the four bottom quintiles is channelled primarily through secondary and, to a lesser
extent, primary education whereas the households of the top quintile receive larger transfers through tertiary edu-
cation. In absolute terms the transfers directed to the middle quintiles through primary and secondary public
education are higher than the corresponding transfers to the bottom and top quintiles, whereas the higher the
quintile the larger the mean tertiary education in-kind state transfer. In terms of aggregate inequality, the in-
kind public transfers in the cases of primary and second- ary education have a clearly equalising effect. However,
for the tertiary education transfers some indices suggest a small decline in inequality, while others record an
increase in post-transfer inequality. It is interesting to note that the households of the top quintile which benefit
most from tertiary education are those belonging to the ninth decile. Actually, members of households of the
tenth top decile are under-represented in tertiary edu- cation. This is a pattern consistently found in all the sub-
sequent tables and may be an indication that a consider- able proportion of the offspring of very rich households
study in foreign universities.
Following the literature, the unit of analysis in the main part of the paper is the household. However, it can
be argued that in distributional studies it may be prefer- able to use distributions of persons rather than house-
8
In order to put the distributional impact of these transfers in an appropriate context, this impact can be compared with
the distributional impact of non-pension cash public transfers in Greece, using the data of the same Household Budget Survey.
Admittedly, the Greek social protection system is primarily a pensions system and cash transfers play a far less important
role in Greece than in most developed countries. They account for just around 1 of aggregate disposable income but, unlike
in-kind transfers of education services, they are supposed to serve explicitly redistributive goals. As a result of these trans-
fers, inequality in the distribution of equivalent income per household in Greece declines between 0.92 and 4.18
according to the indices used in Table 3. In other words, the progressive distributional impact of public education in Greece
is more significant than the distributional impact of all the pub- lic transfer payments in cash taken together, excluding pen-
sions
9
This is an unambiguous claim since the Lorenz curves of the post-transfer distribution dominates the Lorenz curve of the
pre-transfer distribution. For further details, see Antoninis and Tsakloglou 1997.
holds Sen, 1992. For this reason, we also examined the distributional impact of in-kind transfers of education
services using the distribution of equivalent consumption expenditure per capita instead of the distribution of
equivalent consumption expenditure per household. The results were almost identical to those reported in Tables
3–5. An example using the counterpart of Table 3 for the distribution of equivalent consumption expenditure
per capita is reported in Appendix A. In qualitative terms, the results reported there are virtually indis-
tinguishable from those of Table 3. In quantitative terms they suggest that the positive impact of the transfers in
the fields of primary and secondary education may be even stronger than that reported in Table 3. The impact
of transfers in the field of tertiary education remains ambiguous.
Even though the results reported in Table 3 are very interesting, they may be a little misleading, as the sample
used for the examination of the distributional impact of public education includes several households that are
very unlikely to benefit directly from public education elderly households, childless couples, etc.. For this rea-
son, we decided to repeat the exercise of Table 3 using two alternative approaches.
The first approach isolates the cohorts that are most likely to have members participating in the education
system according to the age of the household head. More specifically, in this case the sample consists of all the
households with heads aged 25–60 4197 households. This sample includes the overwhelming majority of
households with members in primary and secondary edu- cation as well as about half of those with members in
tertiary education most of the remaining tertiary edu- cation
students live
in households
headed by
themselves. The results are reported in Table 4. Quali- tatively they do not differ substantially from the results
of Table 3 but quantitatively they are stronger. On aver- age, in 1988 the households headed by persons aged 25–
60 received an in-kind transfer of education services from the state equivalent to 4.82 of their consumption
expenditure. The impact of these transfers appears to be highly progressive and the inequality indices decline
between 4.34 and 9.81. This result is mainly due to the transfers in the fields of primary and, particularly,
secondary education, while transfers in the field of ter- tiary education are quantitatively smaller and more “neu-
tral” from a distributional point of view nevertheless, since many beneficiaries of tertiary education are not
included in the sample, no clear conclusions can be drawn. The equalising impact of the primary and sec-
ondary education system is, probably, the consequence of two factors. The first factor is demographic; poorer
households tend to have more children than better-off households and, as a result, the former have more parti-
cipants in the compulsory levels of the education sys-
P. Tsakloglou,
M. Antoninis
Economics
of Education
Review 18
1999 439–452
Table 4 Distributional impact of public education in-kind transfers: Greece 1988—only households with heads aged 25–60 n 5 4197
Atkinson Atkinson
Bottom 2nd
3rd 4th
Top Gini
1st Theil 2nd Theil
Distribution index
index quintile
quintile quintile
quintile quintile
index index
index e 5 0.5
e 5 2 Initial distribution
74 773 119 172
155 677 202 696
297 147 0.3036
0.0744 0.2729
0.1548 0.1554
mean consumption expenditure Final distribution
8668 9193
9072 8098
5948 0.2904
0.0671 0.2528
0.1452 0.1413
mean transfer2 of mean 11.59
7.71 5.83
4.00 2.00
24.34 29.81
27.37 26.20
29.07 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus primary education transfers
3171 3070
3041 2739
2109 0.2991
0.0722 0.2640
0.1503 0.1503
mean transfer2 of mean 4.24
2.58 1.95
1.35 0.71
21.47 22.96
23.26 22.91
23.28 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus secondary education transfers
4507 5103
4167 4011
2269 0.2969
0.0713 0.2629
0.1483 0.1486
mean transfer2 of mean 6.03
4.28 2.68
1.98 0.76
22.19 24.17
23.66 24.20
24.38 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus tertiary education transfers
990 1020
1862 1347
1571 0.3030
0.0741 0.2721
0.1540 0.1548
mean transfer2 of mean 1.32
0.86 1.20
0.66 0.53
20.19 20.40
20.29 20.52
20.39 consumption expenditure
447 P.
Tsakloglou,
M. Antoninis
Economics
of Education
Review 18
1999 439–452
Table 5 Distributional impact of public education in-kind transfers: Greece 1988—only households with members aged 6–24 n 5 3185
Atkinson Atkinson
Bottom 2nd
3rd 4th
Top Gini
1st Theil 2nd Theil
Distribution index
index quintile
quintile quintile
quintile quintile
index index
index e 5 0.5
e 5 2 Initial distribution
84 596 125 644
163 084 205 964
313 507 0.2897
0.0673 0.2471
0.1393 0.1397
mean consumption expenditure Final distribution
12 973 13 200
13 313 12 344
11 121 0.2716
0.0573 0.2188
0.1273 0.1210
mean transfer2 of mean 15.33
10.51 8.16
5.99 3.55
26.25 214.86
211.45 28.61
213.39 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus primary education transfers
4413 4149
3957 3667
3429 0.2841
0.0645 0.2347
0.1338 0.1333
mean transfer2 of mean 5.20
3.30 2.43
1.78 1.09
21.93 24.16
25.02 23.95
24.58 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus secondary education transfers
6289 6388
6069 5512
3907 0.2810
0.0634 0.2342
0.1312 0.1312
mean transfer2 of mean 7.43
5.08 3.72
2.68 1.25
23.00 25.79
25.22 25.81
26.08 consumption expenditure
Initial distribution plus tertiary education transfers
2271 2663
3287 3163
3785 0.2887
0.0668 0.2469
0.1379 0.1391
mean transfer2 of mean 2.68
2.12 2.02
1.54 1.21
20.35 20.74
20.08 21.01
20.43 consumption expenditure
448 P. Tsakloglou, M. Antoninis Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452
tem
10
. The second factor has to do with the fact that private education has a very high income elasticity of
demand Kanellopoulos Psacharopoulos, 1997 and almost all the private education students who do not
benefit from the corresponding public transfers are mem- bers of households belonging to the top two quintiles.
The second approach isolates the households with members who could participate in the education system;
that is, in this case the sample consists of all households with members aged 6–24 3185 households
11
. In this case almost all the current beneficiaries of public edu-
cation are included in the sample, but the overwhelming majority of the non-beneficiaries is left out of the picture.
The results are reported in Table 5 and in quantitative terms the estimates are even stronger than those of Table
4. The value of the in-kind transfers to the households in the sample is equivalent to 7.05 of the value of their
consumption expenditure. In absolute terms the mean value of the in-kind transfer of education services per
household does not vary substantially across quintiles. However, due to the fact that the mean consumption
expenditures of the quintiles differ considerably, these in-kind transfers as a proportion of the consumption
expenditure vary enormously across quintiles 15.33, 10.51, 8.16, 5.99 and 3.55 for the bottom,
second, third, fourth and top quintile, respectively. In general, the lower the quintile the higher the value of the
mean primary and secondary education transfer-in-kind per household, while the opposite is true in the case of
tertiary education. Careful examination of the data reveals that this differential impact is the result of three
factors, two of which were discussed earlier firstly, poorer households have more children and, secondly,
private education is more prevalent in the top quintiles. The third factor is that members of households belonging
to higher quintiles are disproportionally over-represented in tertiary education
12
. Table 5 suggests that inequality declines considerably when public in-kind education
10
The average number of children aged 6–14 per household is 0.61 in the bottom quintile of Table 4, 0.62 in the second,
0.59 in the third, 0.57 in the fourth and 0.42 in the top quintile.
11
The age limit of 24 was selected for two reasons. Firstly, since students are admitted to tertiary education after participat-
ing in competitive examinations operating on a numerus clausus basis, a considerable proportion of them start their tertiary edu-
cation studies not in the age of 18 but in the age of 19 or 20. Secondly, since there are virtually no time limits for the period
of studies in tertiary education institutions in Greece, the majority of students do not complete their studies during the
normal period 3–6 years, depending on the type of institution. Indeed, our data show a sharp drop in the tertiary education
participation rate only after the age of 24.
12
The proportion of tertiary education students in the popu- lation of the bottom quintile is 2.03 and rises to 2.58,
3.21, 3.24 and 4.20 as we move to the top quintile.
transfers are taken into account. Aggregate inequality among the households in the sample declines between
6.25 and 14.86 after the impact of these transfers is accounted for.
The final part of our empirical analysis adopts an alter- native approach. Instead of assuming that the benefits of
public education are shared by all household members, it is assumed that these benefits are captured exclusively
by the students themselves. The distributions used are distributions of persons rather than households and com-
parisons of the levels of inequality before and after the transfers are made for members of particular age groups.
These groups are defined in such a way as to include the potential beneficiaries of each level of the education
system 6–11, 12–17 and 18–24 for primary, secondary and tertiary education, respectively. More specifically,
it is assumed that the pre-transfer welfare level of each member of these groups is determined by hisher level
of equivalent consumption expenditure while the post- transfer welfare level is determined by hisher equivalent
consumption expenditure plus the value of the public transfer in the corresponding education level, if he or she
is participating.
The results are shown in Table 6 and, in general, they confirm the results of the other tables of this section.
Primary education transfers have a strongly equalising impact. The estimates of the first two lines show that the
values of all inequality indices, apart from the Gini index, decline by around a fifth after public transfers are
taken into account. Note that in our sample there is not a single student in the bottom quintile that receives private
education and that for the members of this quintile the value of the average primary education in-kind transfer
is as high as 25.19 of the mean equivalent consumption expenditure of the quintile. The mean value of the in-
kind transfer declines considerably in the top quintile because a substantial proportion of the students in this
quintile attend private schools. Even more impressive is the equalising impact of public transfers in the field of
secondary education. The post-transfer estimates of the inequality indices are 22–24 lower than the corre-
sponding pre-transfer estimates, apart from the estimates of the Gini index which records a more modest decline
12.07. The mean public transfer to the members of the bottom and top quintiles are lower than the mean
transfers received by the members of the three middle quintiles; in the case of the bottom quintile because
fewer members of the quintile participate in the edu- cation system and in the case of the top quintile because
proportionally more members of this quintile enrol in private education institutions. Regarding tertiary edu-
cation, the results show that the higher the quintile, the higher the value of the mean public transfer. The distri-
butional impact of these transfers in almost neutral. One of the indices Atkinson, e 5 2 records an increase in
inequality after the in-kind tertiary education transfers,
449 P.
Tsakloglou,
M. Antoninis
Economics
of Education
Review 18
1999 439–452
Table 6 Distributional impact of public education in-kind transfers: Greece 1988—distributions of persons in particular age brackets
Atkinson Atkinson
Bottom 2nd
3rd 4th
Top Gini
1st Theil 2nd Theil
Distribution index
index quintile
quintile quintile
quintile quintile
index index
index e 5 0.5
e 5 2 Initial distribution of persons aged
6–11 31 638
52 701 69 281
91 493 151 702
0.3001 0.0734
0.2742 0.1523
0.1538 mean equivalent consumption
expenditure Initial distribution of persons aged
6–11 plus primary education 7969
7944 7866
7556 6863
0.2767 0.0596
0.2149 0.1245
0.1217 transfers n 5 1635
25.19 15.07
11.35 8.26
4.52 27.80
218.80 221.63
218.25 220.87
mean transfer2 of mean equiv. consumption exp.
Initial distribution of persons aged 12–17
32 265 51 346
66 187 85 586
142 261 0.2884
0.0673 0.2410
0.1408 0.1384
mean equivalent consumption expenditure
Initial distribution of persons aged 12–17 plus secondary education
9971 10 579
10 361 10 056
9552 0.2536
0.0522 0.1858
0.1093 0.1054
transfers n 5 1744 30.90
20.60 15.65
11.75 6.71
212.07 222.44
222.90 222.37
223.84 mean transfer2 of mean equiv.
consumption exp. Initial distribution of persons aged
18–24 35 273
54 572 70 448
92 835 145 102
0.2757 0.0601
0.2259 0.1226
0.1253 mean equivalent consumption
expenditure Initial distribution of persons aged
18–24 plus tertiary education 4520
4637 6412
5984 7227
0.2739 0.0595
0.2281 0.1203
0.1251 transfers n 5 1908
12.81 8.50
9.10 6.45
4.98 20.65
21.00 1 0.97
21.88 20.16
mean transfer2 of mean equiv. consumption exp.
450 P. Tsakloglou, M. Antoninis Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452
while the rest of the indices used in our analysis record a modest decline in inequality
13
.
5. Conclusions
