Public Expenditures on Education and Income Distribution in Colombia. World Bank Staff Occasional Papers Number Eighteen.

The costs of education are usually shared by governments and students. Cost benefit analyses have failed to indicate how these costs should be apportioned, since such analyses measure only economic benefits and leave out the psychological, sociological, and political benefits governments and educators must consider in financial planning. Economists have also ignored the question of how the increased cost of more effective education is to be paid and how much those paying but not being educated will stand to benefit. Analysis of the public financing of education in Colombia shows that such financing does contribute to redistributing income from the rich to the poor, particularly at the elementary level in urban areas where the poor benefit from public education while the rich make use of private schooling. Public support of secondary and higher education benefits the middle classes at the expense of both rich and poor. Public financing also tends to redistribute wealth from richer to poorer districts of the country. A dynamic analysis of the effects of such redistribution over time, which would have great implications for planning policy for the future, remains to be made. (Author/PGD)