A Public Choice Theory of Budgets: Implications for Education in Less Developed Countries

Public Expenditures, Growth, and Poverty: Lessons from Developing Countries

“…To the extent that increasing primary and secondary expenditures reflects extensive expansion into poorer rural areas, this is also consistent w i t h the fact that the poor are more constrained by market failures and l o w incomes. I n terms o f use o f expenditures, Gallagher (1993) found that education expenditures did have a positive impact on education outcomes once one controlled for its quality and efficiency. In a more recent paper, Rajkumar and Swaroop (2002) found that the link between education expenditures and education attainment is greater in countries w i t h better governance.…”

A matter of money? Policy analysis of rural boarding schools in China

“…Recently, public choice analysis of education policy has attracted increasing attention (Devine, 2004;Gallagher, 1993;West, 2009). Applying economic tools to political science, public choice theory is concerned with the setting of non-market decision making (Muller, 2003).…”

“…The rural poor, who generally constitute a majority of the population in developing countries, are one of the most vulnerable groups in policy decisions of public welfare (for example, education and health care) by the government, because they have limited ability in affecting budget processes (Gallagher, 1993). China is no exception.…”

Poverty and economic policy: what happens when researchers disagree?

“…Table 1. Global poverty estimates based on US$1.08 per day at 1993PPP, 1981 People living on less than $1.08 a day (millions) 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2001 East Asia & Pacific 767 558 424 472 416 287 282 284 China 606 421 308 377 336 212 224 212 Europe & Central Asia 1 1 2 2 17 20 30 18 Latin America & the Caribbean 36 46 45 49 52 52 54 50 Middle East & North Africa 9 8 7 6 4 5 8 7 South Asia 475 460 473 462 476 441 453 428 Sub-Saharan Africa 164 198 219 227 241 269 292 314 Total 1451 1272 1169 1219 1206 1075 1117 1101 Excluding China 845 850 861 841 870 863 894 888 People living on less than $ Empirically, the most recent global income poverty estimates (see Table 1) are that 1.1 billion people-approximately one in five of the world's population or 21.3 per cent-live under the dollar-a-day poverty measure. If China is excluded the absolute number of poor people has actually risen in the last two decades.…”

“…Whether public expenditure is good or not for the poor depends on whether the expenditures reach the poor or benefit the non-poor. A number of cross-country studies have shown that government spending on public goods in health and education makes an overall positive contribution to multi-dimensional poverty reduction and to the income poor, however there is a wide variation in country experience (for example, Anand and Ravallion, 1993;Barro, 1991;Bidani and Ravallion, 1997;Hojman, 1996;Gallagher, 1993;Gundlach et al, 2001;Tanzi and Chu, 1998;Van de Walle, 1996). However, many studies have questioned to what extent the income poor do benefit from public expenditures (Demery and Walton, 1998;Dollar and Kraay, 2002;Filmer et al, 1998;Filmer and Pritchett, 1997;Flug et al, 1998;Gupta et al, 2002;Landau, 1986;Noss, 1991;Mingat and Tan, 1998;Ravallion et al, 1993).…”