Education and Income Inequality: A Meta-Regression Analysis Abdul Jabbar Abdullah* Hristos Doucouliagos Elizabeth Manning - FIRST DRAFT - Please do not quote without permission from the authors September 2011 Abstract This paper revisits the literature that investigates the effects of education on inequality. Specifically, the paper provides a comprehensive quantitative review of the extant econometrics literature through a meta-regression analysis of 64 empirical studies that collectively report 868 estimates of the effects of education on inequality. We find that education affects the two tails of the distribution of incomes; it reduces the income share of top earners and increases the share of the bottom earners, but has no effect on the share of the middle class. Inequality in education widens income inequality. Education has a larger negative effect on inequality in Africa. The heterogeneity in reported estimates can be largely explained by differences in the specification of the econometric model. JEL Codes: I24, C01 Keywords: Education, inequality, meta-regression analysis Number of words: 12,683 * Corresponding author. Abdullah: Universiti Teknologi Mara Sarawak Campus, Malaysia and PhD Candidate Deakin University,
[email protected] Doucouliagos: School of Accounting, Economic and Finance, Deakin University,
[email protected] Manning: School of Accounting, Economic and Finance, Deakin University,
[email protected] 1 Education and Income Inequality: A Meta-Regression Analysis 1. Introduction Income inequality is a critically important social, political and economic issue in the study of economic development. Inequality can affect economic growth and development and it can impact upon political stability and class and ethnic tensions.1 The empirical literature identifies various factors that shape inequality, such as urbanization, the level of development, political regime, government intervention and land inequality.