This study considers the politics of public education and its impact on economic growth and welfare across generations. We employ probabilistic voting to demonstrate the generational conflict regarding taxes and spending and show that aging shifts the tax burden from the retired to the working generation, reduces public education spending, and ultimately slows economic growth. We subsequently consider a legal constraint that aims to boost education spending: a spending floor for education. This constraint stimulates economic growth but creates a trade-off between current and future generations’ welfare. Finally, the quantitative implications of our results are explored by calibrating the model to the Japanese economy.

本研究考虑了公共教育的政治及其对世代相传的经济增长和福利的影响。我们采用概率投票来证明与税收和支出有关的世代冲突，并表明老龄化将税收负担从退休一代转移到了工作一代，减少了公共教育支出，并最终减缓了经济增长。随后，我们考虑了旨在增加教育支出的法律限制：教育的支出底线。这种限制刺激了经济增长，但在今世后代的福利之间做出了折衷。最后，通过对日本经济进行模型校准来探索我们结果的定量含义。