Effets des dépenses publiques d’éducation, la fiscalité et la corruption sur la croissance économique en Afrique de l’ouest : une analyse empirique sur données de panel

Dans cette étude, nous examinons empiriquement les effets des dépenses publiques d’éducation, la fiscalité et la corruption sur la croissance économique par habitant à long terme à partir de modèles économétriques des données de panel de 10 pays d’Afrique de l’ouest sur la période 2004-2020. D’abord, nos résultats montrent qu’il existe une relation positive et significative entre les dépenses publiques d’éducation retardées de 5 ans et la croissance économique par habitant. En effet, une augmentation de 1% des dépenses publiques d’éducation entraînerait une hausse moyenne de 0,42% du taux de croissance économique. Tous les gouvernements de l’Afrique occidentale veulent atteindre les objectifs de l’éducation pour tous. Cette extension ne pourrait pas se réaliser sans une augmentation des dépenses publiques. Parallèlement, suivant l’approche de l’équivalence ricardienne, les sources de financement de l’éducation, telles que les impôts et les dettes publiques, agissent négativement sur la croissance économique. Ensuite, la corruption, en affectant significativement la croissance économique, entraîne des pertes importantes de recettes fiscales. Ce qui gangrène l’efficacité des efforts de financement des politiques publiques d’éducation. Enfin, dans le cadre scolaire global, seul le taux de scolarisation aux études supérieures exerce un effet réellement significatif sur la croissance à long terme. Ce résultat est d’une grande portée, car la forte tertiarisation des économies de ces pays est accompagnée d’un secteur informel occupant une place très importante et marginalement pris en compte dans le calcul du PIB. In this study, we empirically examine the effects of public education spending, taxation and corruption on long-term per capita economic growth using econometric models of panel data from 10 West African countries on the period 2004-2020. First, our results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between public education spending delayed by 5 years and per capita economic growth. Indeed, a 1% increase in public education spending would lead to an average 0.42% increase in the rate of economic growth. All governments in West Africa want to achieve education for all goals. This extension could not be achieved without an increase in public spending. At the same time, following the Ricardian equivalence approach, the sources of financing of education, such as taxes and public debt, act negatively on economic growth. Second, corruption, by significantly affecting economic growth, leads to significant losses in tax revenue. This undermines the effectiveness of efforts to fund public education policies. Finally, within the overall educational framework, only the rate of enrollment in higher education has a truly significant effect on long-term growth. This result is farreaching, because the strong tertiarization of the economies of these countries is accompanied by an informal sector occupying a very important place and marginally taken into account in the calculation of the GDP.

Intergenerational Upward (Im)mobility and Political Support of Public Education Spending

This paper provides a simple model of hierarchical education to study the political determination of public education spending and its allocation between different tiers of education. The model integrates private education decisions by allowing parents, who are differentiated according to income and human capital, to top up public expenditures with private transfers. We identify four groups of households with conflicting preferences over the the size of the public education budget and its allocation. In equilibrium, public education budget, private expenditures and expenditure allocation among different tiers of education, depend on which group of households is in power and on country-specific features such as income inequality and intergenerational persistence in education. By running a cluster analysis on 32 OECD countries, we seek to establish if distinctive ‘education regimes’, akin to those identified in the theoretical analysis, could be discerned. Our main finding is that a high intergenerational persistence in education might foster the establishment of education regimes in which the size and the allocation of the public budget among different tiers of education prevent a stable and significant increase of the population graduation rate, thus plunging the country in a ‘low education’ trap.

Children Left Behind in China: The Role of School Fees

The barriers faced by Chinese rural–urban migrants to access social services, particularly education, in host cities could help explain why the majority of them choose to leave their children behind. We identified the causal impacts of school fees by instrumenting for it with unexpected shocks to the city’s public education spending. Our findings suggest that higher fees deter migrant workers from bringing their children with them, especially their daughters, reduce the number of children they bring, and increase educational remittances to rural areas for the children left behind. Increases in school fees mostly affect vulnerable migrant workers and could have stronger impacts during an economic crisis. These findings hold for different model specifications and robustness checks.

Black Seat Share and Policy Representation in States

A common expectation is that when blacks serve in elected office black policy interests will be better represented. This chapter examines how black seat share affects education and welfare policy in states, from 2001 to 2011. The expectation is that states with a greater black seat share will spend more money on education and will have more liberal welfare policy. It shows that while black seat share increases per-pupil public education spending, it is associated with less liberal welfare policy. In fact, the finding for welfare policy emerges in states with Democratic control of the legislature and provides evidence of backlash in response to an increased black seat share. Citizen ideology and region are two other key predictors of education and welfare policy in states.