From Duty to Right: the Role of Public Education in the Transition to Aging Societies

This paper argues that currently advanced, aging economies experienced a qualitative change in the role of public education during the process of industrialization. In the early phases of the Industrial Revolution, public education was regarded as a duty that regulated child labor and thereby discouraged childbirth. As these economies developed and the population aged, younger generations came to view public education as a right, whereas older generations desirous of other public services became more politically in‡uential. The eventual policy bias in favor of the elderly placed a heavier education burden on the young, inducing them to have fewer children. This vicious cycle between population aging and the undersupply of public education may have decelerated the growth of advanced economies in the last few decades. Keywords: Compulsory Education; Generational Con‡ict; Fertility; Growth. JEL Classi…cation: D70; H50, J10; J20; O40. Sugimoto: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, 6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]); Nakagawa: Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]). The authors are grateful to Mayumi Kawasugi and Akira Nakamura for excellent research assistance, and Charles Y. Horioka, Shinsuke Ikeda, Fumio Ohtake, Yoshiyasu Ono, Shizuka Sekita, Elmer Sterken, Shinji Takenaka, and seminar participants at Kobe University; Kyoto University; and the Osaka University Forum 2007 in Groningen, Netherlands, for their useful comments and encouragement. This research is supported by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scienti…c Research (No. 18830036).