An adult life cycle perspective on public subsidies to higher education in three countries
Résumé
Empirical analyses of the incidence of public subsidies for higher education are commonly seriously misleading because of an inappropriate age composition of the adult reference groups and a disregard of changes in successive adult cohors. Moreover, the magnitude and direction of distortions in selectivity estimates and their interpretation depend upon whether the selection criteria refer to parental income, education, or occupation, each of which is both socially and economically important. These issues are discussed here analytically and illustrated empirically with data from Chile, France and Malaysia