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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2015
Arthur Okun recently observed that even in economics the times are changing. Whereas the focus of the profession in the early 1960's was on the aggregative issues – mainly lagging economic growth – it has now shifted to a considerable degree to the distributive issues. Particular attention is being given to the problems of the low end of the distribution – “the poverty problem.” In agricultural economics we are witnessing a somewhat similar trend with increasing interest and professional time being allocated to rural poverty and rural development.
One of the manifestations of the trend in both general and agricultural economics to examine distributional questions has been a substantial increase in studies of the distributional impact of various public programs [cf. 6, 7, 23, 24]. Both because of the magnitude of expenditure involved and its presumed role in providing equality of opportunity, education has received particular attention. Consequently substantial literature has now been accumulated on the distributive impact of public schooling.