調對教育支出的影響及其回報：以菲律賓為例

Abstract

調整人口成長率對教育支出的影響及其回報：以菲律賓為例

This paper looks into the indirect effect of the Philippines’ rapid population growth to allocation of government budget for education, which is essential for economic growth. In a nutshell, a growing population should be coupled with an increasing budget in order to maintain the quality of public service per person. However, in a country that has limited resources like the Philippines, a fast increasing population results to smaller per capita share from the government’s yearly budget. This paper quantifies the country’s forgone savings for public education spending in the last ten years, had the yearly population growth rate been the same with desirable levels such as that of Thailand. It also quantifies the resulting foregone return on investment on education, which could have, in a way, helped alleviate poverty in the country. It could be noted that Public Finance focuses on spending activities of government and its influence on the allocation of resources and distribution of income (Rosen 2005), thus measuring these ‘indirect’ effects should be considered when government officials allocates yearly budget.