Effects of Public Education Funding on Production and Birth Rate Decline in India
Open Access
- Author:
- Nissen, Callum
- Area of Honors:
- Anthropology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Mary Katherine Shenk, Thesis Supervisor
Laurel Nichole Pearson, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- demographic transition
population ageing
birth rate decline
educational signaling
signaling
public education
government expenditure
policy
India
demography
economics - Abstract:
- Because education is a positional good, public funding of education may cause credential inflation instead of leveling skewed income distributions. The signaling theory of education suggests that reductions in public funding of education are unlikely to reduce economic growth. A possible consequence of credential inflation is fertility decline caused by competitive parental investment in the status of offspring. If by decreasing their funding of education, states are likely to raise fertility and unlikely to reduce growth or worsen income inequality, they could avoid pension crises caused by high tax burdens on aging populations. In this study, covariation between fertility, economic growth, and funding of education in the states of India is analyzed in order to evaluate this premise. While Indian populations aren’t yet ageing very quickly, so that the effects of population ageing can’t be studied, the states of India are highly variable in fertility, economic growth, and funding of education, and have been the location of both thorough demographic surveys and a thriving low-cost private schooling industry, so they are an optimal case to study the effect of education funding on production and fertility. While an association between public education funding and low fertility is found, some of the assumptions that underly this study’s hypothesis about why such an association might exist contradict the study’s findings. Although there is evidence that signaling theory applies to India, the hypothesis that this causes reductions in public funding of later education not to effect production is contradicted.