Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2016

Abstract

Accumulation of human capital is proved to be crucial for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Education is counted as one of the basic services that allows individuals to gain better skills and knowledge which enhances economic growth and is also essential to combat poverty. Although investment in education is mostly financed by the government, most of the families privately contribute to their children’s education. Some of the researches argued that education expenditures depend on the income level of the households. From this point of view, private education can only be afforded by households who are at the higher income groups. Therefore, the focus of this study has twofold: One is to examine the determinants of education expenditure of Turkish households and the other is to reveal the impact of the different income groups on the education expenditures. Household Budget Survey (HBS) for the years 2002, 2010 and 2013 conducted by Turkish Statistic Institution (TurkStat) is utilized for Tobit model estimations. Findings show that higher Household income levels leads to higher educational expenditures. We also find that households with better human capital spend more on their children’s education. For 002, however, income elasticity of education expenditure is higher compare for poorer households compared to the richer ones, which means that poor are more sensitive to income changes with respect to education expenditures. We do not find this for the year 2013.

Identifier

2334-282X

Journal Title

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

ISSN

2334-282X

Publisher

Middle East Economic Association and Loyola University Chicago

Volume

18

Comments

Presentation of the articles in the Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies was made possible by a limited license granted to Loyola University Chicago and Middle East Economics Association from the authors who have retained all copyrights in the articles.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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Economics Commons

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