School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature

Abstract

We review the theoretical, computational, and empirical research on school vouchers, with a focus on the latter. Our assessment is that the evidence to date is not sufficient to warrant recommending that vouchers be adopted on a widespread basis; however, multiple positive findings support continued exploration. Specifically, the empirical research on small-scale programs does not suggest that awarding students a voucher is a systematically reliable way to improve educational outcomes, and some detrimental effects have been found. Nevertheless, in some settings, or for some subgroups or outcomes, vouchers can have a substantial positive effect on those who use them. Studies of large-scale voucher programs find student sorting as a result of their implementation, although of varying magnitude. Evidence on both small-scale and large-scale programs suggests that competition induced by vouchers leads public schools to improve. Moreover, research is making progress on understanding how vouchers may be designed to limit adverse effects from sorting, while preserving positive effects related to competition. Finally, our sense is that work originating in a single case (e.g., a given country) or in a single research approach (e.g., experimental designs) will not provide a full understanding of voucher effects; fairly wide-ranging empirical and theoretical work will be necessary to make progress. (JEL H52, H75, I21, I22, I28, O15)

Entry Barriers and Nonprofit Founding Rates: An Examination of the Milwaukee Voucher School Population

“…As the oldest and largest, and by some deemed most important (Epple, Romano, and Urquiola 2015), urban private school voucher program in the United States, the MPCP offers an outstanding case for exploring the role of institutions and nonprofit entrepreneurship. Not only is the Milwaukee voucher case unique in that it is well-established via its 26-year history, it has also been populated almost exclusively by non-profit organizations (Andersson and Ford 2015), and has generated large numbers of new entrants and large numbers of failed providers.…”

Unravelling Hidden Inequities in a Universal Public Long-Term Care System

“…Abásolo et al (2017) find that the financial crisis affected access to public health services for the worse-off, notably through reduced access to specialists and lower hospitalisations. of provision, research on their equity effects is scarce and inconclusive (Epple et al, 2017). 4 On the one hand, vouchers may increase competition and the quality of services, which in turn can reduce inequity.…”

How Much Should We Trust Micro-data? A Comparison of the Socio-demographic Profile of Malawian Households Using Census, LSMS and DHS data

“…Larger surveys allow more coherent representation of the underlying survey population especially when multivariate and subsample analyses are employed. Our findings further call for empirical validation studies and comparative approaches, especially if multivariate analyses are employed and sensitive conclusions are drawn (Epple et al, 2015).…”