Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452 www.elsevier.comlocateeconedurev
On the distributional impact of public education: evidence from Greece
Panos Tsakloglou
a,
, Manos Antoninis
b
a
Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission Str., Athens 10434, Greece
b
St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6JF, UK Received 1 January 1997; received in revised form 16 July 1998; accepted 1 September 1998
Abstract
Household budget survey data and public budget consolidated data for 198788 are combined to yield a non-esti- mation based measure of the benefit of public education outlays in Greece. As expected for a country where education
services are provided free of charge and the role of private education is limited, transfers in the fields of primary and secondary education contribute strongly to a decline in inequality. The distributional impact of tertiary education sub-
sidies is shown to be negligible, although indirect evidence suggests that this could well be regressive. [JEL I21, D31]
1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Public education and redistribution; Greece
1. Introduction
Questions related to the distributional impact of public education have been widely discussed in both developed
and developing countries
1
. Until recently, the debate concerning such issues in Greece was rather limited. In
Greece education services are provided free of charge by the state at all levels primary, secondary and tertiary,
the role of private education is limited and so it has been widely assumed that education subsidies have a pro-
gressively redistributive impact. However, a number of studies have shown that in Greece, as in many other
countries, education is closely associated with inequality and that, ceteris paribus, the higher the educational level
of the household head the higher the standard of living
Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 301-8203195; fax: 1 301- 8214122; e-mail: panos.tsakloglouhermes.aueb.gr
1
On distributional studies for developed countries see Smeeding, Saunders, Coder, Jenkins, Fritzell, Hagenaars et al.
1993 and references cited therein. With respect to developing countries see, for example, Meerman 1979; Jimenez 1986;
Selden and Wasylenko 1995.
0272-775799 - see front matter
1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 7 2 - 7 7 5 7 9 9 0 0 0 1 8 - 7
enjoyed by the household Tsakloglou, 1992, 1993, 1997. Further, despite the free provision of education
services, there is evidence of inter-generational trans- mission of educational inequalities Papatheodorou,
1997. Therefore, the exact relationship between public education spending and income distribution needs
further elucidation.
In the 1980s the Greek economy stagnated, large budget deficits were mounting and a number of stabilis-
ation programs have been adopted to reverse the situ- ation. As usual in these cases, education is one of the
first candidates for substantial spending cuts. Within this framework, issues related to the efficiency of the Greek
education system have been raised. A consensus seems to emerge that major improvements are needed in order
for the system to equip the new cohorts of the labour force with the qualifications required to achieve rapid
economic growth rates. On the other hand, although no quantitative evidence is presented to support various
conflicting assertions, questions have also been raised about the redistributive role of, at least, tertiary education
Psacharopoulos, 1988.
The present study aims to fill the existing gap by pro- viding quantitative estimates of the distributional impact
440 P. Tsakloglou, M. Antoninis Economics of Education Review 18 1999 439–452
Table 1 The structure of the Greek education system
Primary education 1.
Basic education: Primary school Ages 6–11
Compulsory Duration of studies: 6 years
Secondary education 1.
Lower secondary education: Gymnasium Ages 12–14
Compulsory
a
Duration of studies: 3 years 2.
Upper secondary education: Lyceum Ages 15–17
Non-Compulsory Duration of studies: 2–3 years
a. General Lyceum 65 of students b. Technical–Vocational Lyceum 22 of students
c. Technical–Vocational School 8 of students d. Integrated Lyceum 5 of students
Tertiary education 1.
Higher Education Institutions: Universities Duration of studies: 4–6 years
2. Technological Education Institutions
Duration of studies: 3 years
a
During the period 1991–1994, the drop-out rate from lower secondary education was on average 8.9 Paleokrassas, Vretakou Rousseas, 1996.
of public education in Greece as well as estimates of this impact for each educational level separately, using the
information of the 198788 Household Budget Survey. The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. The
next section provides a short description of the structure of the Greek education system. Section 3 is concerned
with methodological issues, while Section 4 presents the empirical results. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper
and discusses its possible policy implications.
2. Structure of the Greek education system
