Ribich, Thomas I., and James L. Murphy. 1975. "The Economic Returns to Increased Educational Spending." Journal of Human Resources 10(1):56-77.

With the help of data from the Project Talent national survey of high schools, and follow-up surveys from the same source, this paper attempts measurement of the long-run effects of increased school spending. School expenditures are found to influence how many years of schooling an individual eventually receives, and the chief effect of spending differences on lifetime income is found to work through this school continuation link. The time-discounted lifetime income gain that is associated with increased spending is estimated to be less than the amount of the increased spending.

The authors are, respectively, Research Economist at the National Institute of Education and Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The work for this paper was financed in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation and in part of the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, through funds granted by the Office of Economic Opportunity pursuant to the provisions of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The American Institute for Research (Project Talent) was generous in its assistance and provision of data. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone.

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