The Impact of Education on Economic Inequality in East Asia

Open Access
- Author:
- Delargy, Ava
- Area of Honors:
- Political Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Bumba Mukherjee, Thesis Supervisor
Gretchen G Casper, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Economic Inequality
Authoritarianism
Education
East Asia - Abstract:
- In this paper I propose to analyze the varying impact of education level on economic inequality with level of authoritarianism as a causal factor in East Asian countries. Often it is assumed that as average education level within a country increases, the disparity between the top income brackets and bottom income brackets will diminish because as the bottom brackets become more educated, their wages increase. Though this assumption can be supported by various past research, countries like China, Singapore, and South Korea present puzzling evidence of high education or increasing education levels, but increasing or stagnant economic inequality, when decreasing economic inequality would be expected. I propose that although regime type cannot indicate level of economic inequality, it can impact the effect that education has on economic development. I test this argument by analyzing changes in economic inequality within varying regime types during periods of increasing, decreasing, and stagnant average education levels while accounting for outside influences on economic inequality such as trade volume and government spending. This study finds that although economic inequality decreases as education level increases in a democratic state, authoritarian states see the same effect of education on economic inequality which is not expected by the original hypothesis regarding authoritarian regimes.