Partisan composition and public spending on adult education: An event study analysis using German county-level data (2008–2022)

Political parties vary in their education policy preferences, with public spending on education serving as one indicator of these policy priorities. We hypothesise that centre-left parties in local government increase public spending on adult education. To test this, we analyse public data on expenditures for adult education at the local level and data on party participation in county and city councils in Germany (n = 390; N = 5534). Using the seat share and party affiliation of the head of the administration as measures of partisan influence, we employ two-way fixed-effects models and heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences estimators to account for variation in treatment timing and duration of parties’ local government participation. The investigation covers the period from 2008 to 2022. For counties where centre-left parties hold a majority of seats, we observe a statistically significant positive effect, whereas where they have the head of administration the effect is not significant.