Who Benefits from Public Education in Greece? Evidence and Policy Implications

This paper examines the distributional impact of public education in Greece using the micro-data of the 1993/94 Household Budget Survey. The aggregate distributional impact of public education is found to be progressive although the incidence varies according to the level of education under examination. In-kind transfers of education services in the fields of primary and secondary education lead to a considerable decline in inequality, whereas the distributional impact of tertiary education transfers is found to be regressive. The overall progressivity of public education transfers declined between 1988 and 1994, and almost the entire decline is driven by changes in the progressivity of tertiary education transfers. The main policy implications of the findings are outlined in the concluding section.