Household schooling behaviors and decentralization

Educational policies and household behaviors interact to determine educatio nal outcomes. Much educational literature, including that on decentralizati on, focuses almost exclusively on school resources and ignores substantial household resources devoted to schooling. The failure to consider how house holds change resource allocations may lead to important misunderstandings o f decentralization effects. A simple framework is presented for: (i) how ho useholds determine schooling investments through choice and voice; and (ii) what are the implications of decentralization on household behaviors given information problems. Some aspects of decentralization may increase effici ency; others are neutral or reduce efficiency. For both efficiency and dist ributional reasons, there may be tradeoffs regarding impacts of decentraliz ation. These considerations mean that there are no simple summary conclusio ns. Instead good analysis must be sensitive to particular aspects of decent ralization being evaluated and implications for efficiency and distribution within particular contexts. Systematic empirical studies of household resp onses to decentralization are high priority for educational research. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.