TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hanushek,Eric A.
AU  - Rivkin,Steven G.
TI  - Understanding the 20th Century Growth in U.S. School Spending
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5547
PY  - 1996
Y2  - April 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5547
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5547.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/736-0942
Fax: 650/723-1687
E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu

Steven G. Rivkin
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144
Chicago, IL 60607
Tel: 312.413.2368
E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1996-08-01
AB  - The persistent increase in spending on elementary and secondary schools has gone virtually undocumented and has received insufficient attention.  Real expenditure per student increased at 3« percent per year over the entire period of 1890-1990.  A decomposition of the spending growth shows that it was propelled by a combination of falling pupil-teacher ratios, increasing real wages to teachers, and rising expenditures outside of the classroom.  While the expansion of education for the handicapped has had a disproportionate effect on spending, most of the growth in expenditure during the 1980s came from other sources.  Teacher salary increases, which reflect competitive pressures particularly for females, have nevertheless failed to keep up with wages in other occupationsþleading to likely declines in teacher quality over time.  Moreover, the magnitude of the wage decline is larger than commonly thought because the relative aging of teachers has masked the sizable declines when teachers are compared to comparably aged people in other occupations.
ER  -