The Allocation of Resources to Education in Less Developed Countries

Abstract

[Excerpt] In the last few years, many less developed countries have suddenly and apparently to their surprise found themselves with too many (relative to the absorptive capacity of their economies) rather than too few workers with intermediate educational attainments. Yet, even as surpluses of educated workers grow larger and larger, the school systems continue to expand and the people continue to demand education. Elsewhere, we have sought to understand the persistence of a high demand for education in countries characterized by a substantial surplus of educated labor. In this paper, we construct a political model of the allocation of resources to education in less developed countries to try to explain why educational systems continue to grow in the face of such surpluses.