Question:

What would be the effect on an economy of the elimination of all government provision and subsidization of education?


A reasonable answer.

Starting at the elementary level, one would expect that having to pay the full costs of educating their children would induce some parents to try to provide these services on their own, doing so sufficiently in-adequately in some cases to render their offspring illiterate. This next generation will still have sufficient human capital to work at low-level jobs and even learn skills on their own. Many, however, will not have acquired an ability to learn things easily and will not have access to the skills required to equip their children for future challenges. One such absent skill may typically be the ability to manage ownership of non-human capital, should that be successfully accumulated. The absence of free schooling would thereby be expected to lead to permanently increased income inequality in the society.

This increase in income inequality would be worsened by the absence of subsidies to higher education. Fewer individuals would acquire the higher-level skills that could be used in the production of goods and services and in formulation of social policy, leading to declines in the aggregate stocks of these types of capital and corresponding increases in their marginal returns. People who successfully acquire these skills will thus earn higher incomes which will enable them to finance the acquisition of these advanced forms of human capital by their offspring. The resulting increase in high-skills inequalities will further distort the community's income distribution in the direction of greater inequality.

The elimination of educational subsidies will cause the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer.

In addition, the substantial reductions in the levels of human capital will lead not only to increases in its marginal returns but to reductions in the level of aggregate output, with these output reductions being augmented by a reduced accumulation of non-human capital as savings become channeled into higher-cost human-capital accumulation. At an unchanged population, incomes per capita will decline on average.

We should thus expect the elimination of subsidies to human capital accumulation to substantially reduce the society's aggregate income and increase the inequality of its distribution.

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