Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:25:37.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why did Education Become Publicly Funded? Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century Growth of Public Primary Schooling in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Christiana Stoddard
Christiana Stoddard*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why do voters publicly fund education? I examine two explanations: public funds may be a means for decisive voters to transfer wealth to themselves or voters may subsidize the education of others to raise social education levels and realize external benefits. I test these theories in the 1800s, when full tax support of primary schools emerged. States where median and mean wealth was closer together had higher fractions of education revenue from public sources. Attendance rates rose when the public share of education funding rose, especially for poor children. These facts are consistent with a model with external benefits of education.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 172 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron. “Search in the Labor Market.” Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper, London School of Economics, London, 1995.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon, and Robinson, James. “The Colonial Origins of Economic Development: An Empirical Investigation.” The American Economic Review 95, no. 5 (2001): 1369–1401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, and Pischke, Jorn-Steffen. “Changes in the Wage Structure, Family Income, and Children's Education.” European Economic Review 45, no. 4–6 (2001): 890–904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary. Human Capital: A Theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Benabou, Roland. “Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract.” American Economic Review 90, no. 1 (2000): 96–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean. Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Chiswick, Barry. “Minimum schooling Legislation, externalities, and a child tax.” The Journal of Law and Economics 15, no. 2 (1972): 353–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciccone, Antonio, and Peri, Giovanni. “Identifying Human Capital Externalities: Theory with an Application to U.S. Cities.” CEPR Discussion Paper No. 3350, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Samuel, and Cohen, Elchanan. “Equity and Efficiency of State Lotteries: Review Essay.” Economics of Education Review 13, no. 4 (1994): 355–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, Sean, and Evans, William. “Income Inequality, the median Voter, and the Support for Public Education.” New York University Working Paper, New York, NY, 2006.Google Scholar
Cremin, Lawrence. American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876. New York: Harper Row Publishers, 1980.Google Scholar
Cubberley, Elwood. The History of Education. Boston, MA: Hougton Mifflin Company, 1920.Google Scholar
Cubberley, Ellwood, and Elliott, Edward. State and County School Administration: Volume II Sourcebook. New York: Macmillan Company, 1915.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley, and Sokoloff, Kenneth. “Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development among New World Economies.” NBER Working Paper No. 9259, Cambridge, MA, October 2002.Google Scholar
Epple, Dennis, and Romano, Richard. “Public Provision of Private Goods.” Journal of Political Economy 104, no. 1 (1996a): 57–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epple, Dennis, and Romano, Richard. ”Ends against the middle: determining public service provision when there are private alternatives.” Journal of Public Economics 62, no. 3 (1996b): 297–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, William N., and Zhang, Ping. “The Impact of Earmarked Lottery Revenue on K-12 Educational Expenditures.” Education Finance and Policy 2, no. 1 (2007): 40–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, Raquel, and Rogerson, Richard. “On the Political Economy of Education Subsidies.” Review of Economic Studies 62, no. 2 (1995): 249–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, Raquel, and Rogerson, Richard. “Public Education and Income Distribution: A Dynamic Quantitative Evaluation of Education Finance Reform.” American Economic Review 88, no. 4 (1998): 813–33.Google Scholar
Field, Alexander. “Economic and Demographic Determinants of Educational Commitment, Massachusetts 1855.” This Journal 39, no. 2 (June 1979): 435–59.Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert. “The Common School Revival: Fact or Fancy.” In Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor or Alexander Gerchenkron, edited by Rosovsky, Henry, 47. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966.Google Scholar
Garratt, Rob, and Marshall, John. “Public finance of Private Goods: The Case of College Education.” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 3 (1994): 566–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glomm, Gerhard, and Ravikumar, B.. “Public versus Private Investment in Human Capital: Endogenous Growth and Income Inequality.” Journal of Political Economy 100, no. 4 (1992): 818–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. “A Brief History of Education in the United States.” NBER Working Paper No. 119, Cambridge, MA, August 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Katz, Lawrence. “Why the United States Led in Education: Lessons from the Secondary School Expansion, 1910–1940.” NBER Working Paper No. 6144, Cambridge, MA, August 1997.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Katz, Lawrence. “Human Capital and Social Capital: the Rise of Secondary Schooling in America, 1910–1940.” NBER Working Paper No. 6439, Cambridge, MA, March 1998.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Katz, Lawrence. “The Virtues of the Past: Education in the First Hundred Years of the New Republic.” NBER Working paper No. 9958, Cambridge, MA, September 2003.Google Scholar
Hansen, L. “Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moment Estimators.” Econometrics 50, no. 4 (1982): 1029–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanushek, Eric, and Somers, Julie. “Schooling, Inequality, and the Impact of Government.” NBER Working Paper No. 7450, Cambridge, MA, December 1999.Google Scholar
James, Estelle. “Why do Countries Choose a Different Public-Private Mix of Educational Services?” Journal of Human Resources 28, no. 3 (1992): 571–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaestle, Carl. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.Google Scholar
Keyssar, Alexander. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2000.Google Scholar
Lott, John. “An Explanation for Public Provision of Education: the Importance of Indoctrination.” Journal of Law and Economics 33, no. 1 (1990): 199–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, Robert. “On the Mechanics of Economic Development.” Journal of Monetary Economics 22, no. 1 (1988): 3–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meltzer, Allan, and Richard, Scott. “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government.” Journal of Political Economy 89, no. 5 (1981): 914–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milligan, Kevin, Moretti, Enrico, and Oreopoulos, Philip. “Does Education Improve Citizenship? Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom.” NBER Working Paper No. 9584, Cambridge, MA, March 2003.Google Scholar
Moretti, Enrico. “Estimating the Social Return to Education: Evidence from Repeated Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Data.” Working Paper No. 22, University of California, Berkley, Berkeley, CA, 1999.Google Scholar
http://firstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSQUERYƑsearchtype=hotauthors:format=BI:numrecs=10:dbname=EconLit::termh1=Novarro%5C%2C+Neva+K.:indexh1=au%3D:sessionid=fsapp13-38696-fgtqeuot-aysapi:entitypagenum=14:0:next=html/records.html:bad=error/badsearch.html Novarro, Neva K. “Earmarked Lottery Profits: A Good Bet for Education Finance?” Journal of Education Finance 31, no. 1 (2005): 23–44.Google Scholar
Pritchett, Lant. “When Will they Ever Learn: Why All Governments Produce Schooling.” Mimeo. Harvard Kennedy School of Government.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven et al. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Population Center [producer and distributor], 2004.Google Scholar
Soares, Jorge. “Self-Interest and Public Funding of Education.” Journal of Public Economics 87, no. 3–4 (2003): 703–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soltow, Lee, and Stevens, Edward. The Rise of Literacy and the Common School of the United States: A socioeconomic analysis to 1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Sonstelie, Jon. “The Welfare Costs of Free Public Schools.” Journal of Political Economy 90, no. 4 (1982): 794–808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, . Seventh Census of the United States: 1850. Washington, DC: GPO, 1853.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, . Statistics of the United States, (including mortality, property, &c.) in 1860: compiled from the original returns and being the final exhibit of the Eighth Census. Washington, DC: GPO, 1866.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, . A Compendium of the Ninth Census. Washington, DC: GPO, 1872.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, . A Compendium of the Tenth Census. Washington, DC: GPO, 1882.Google Scholar
West, E. G.Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy. 3rd ed.Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1994.Google Scholar