Demand for Public Education: Evidence from a Rural School District

There has been much debate in recent years about the quality of local public education in the United States. Much of this discussion has centered around the apparent underperformance of children in basic areas like reading, math, and English as reflected by low scores on standardized achievement exams relative to their international peers and the appropriate level of educational spending. This study examines the question of how much households are willing to pay for improvements in the quality of local public education in two areas of a rural school district in Pennsylvania. The study uses the contingent valuation technique to obtain micro-data by personal interview on demand for improved public school quality. Estimates of willingness to pay are computed and logit/Tobit analyses are used to determine what household characteristics are associated with household willingness to pay. The results of this analysis indicate that the majority of respondents do value improved public school quality and that residents would pay up to approximately twenty-five percent of current educational budgets for a ten percent improvement in school quality as measured by achievement test performance. However, lower income households and those with fewer connections to the local public school are less likely to be supportive of increased expenditures. The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors alone http://www.equotient.net Published in Economics of Education Review 25, 5: 521-531.