Volume 8, Number 2 (Spring) 1973
Johnson, George E., and Frank P. Stafford. 1973. "Social Returns to Quantity and Quality of Schooling." Journal of Human Resources 8(2):139-155.
The authors find high but diminishing marginal returns to investment in expenditures per pupil per year. The study suggests the desirability of increased educational quality in school districts with lower per pupil expenditures so as to equalize the returns to years and annual expenditure per student. (Necessarily, there should be optimization in the way inputs are combined as the school systems move to new output levels--consolidation being a pertinent example.) Since expenditure per student also affects years of schooling attained, a policy of improving the relative quality of school systems in poverty areas may partially offset inherited economic disadvantages.
The authors are in the Department of Economics, University of Michigan. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF 03739). The authors would like to thank Robin Barlow, Harvey Brazer, John Conlisk, Sherwin Rosen, Paula Stephan, and Finis Welch for helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Econometric Society meeting, Detroit, December 1970.
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