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Public education expenditures and private school enrollment
Author(s) -
Estevan Fernanda
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
canadian journal of economics/revue canadienne d'économique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1540-5982
pISSN - 0008-4085
DOI - 10.1111/caje.12136
Subject(s) - endogeneity , private school , demographic economics , natural experiment , population , public education , order (exchange) , instrumental variable , economics , business , public economics , economic growth , demography , finance , sociology , medicine , econometrics , pathology
In this paper, I investigate whether increases in public education expenditures lead to reductions in private school enrollment. In order to deal with the endogeneity of public expenditures, I use as a natural experiment the 1998 FUNDEF reform in Brazil that caused exogenous variations in local public school funding. Using data from Brazilian School and Population censuses, I show that public education expenditures increases are associated with reductions in the share of private school enrollment for grade 1. However, the effect is smaller for grades 2 to 4, which is consistent with the existence of costs associated with switching schools.