Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/463.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Access Implications of Income Contingent Charges for Higher Education: Lessons from Australia

Author

Abstract
This paper describes the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), Australia's income contingent charge mechanism, and analyses its impact on the social composition of university participation. We analyse university participation data from three cohorts of young Australians. The first cohort completed their schooling prior to the introduction of HECS, the second following its introduction and the third after the scheme was amended substantially. We find that the social composition of participants was different in 1999 from that of 1988. However, the distribution was more equal than it was in the late 1980s. That outcome reflected the growth in participation in the middle of the wealth distribution, which was stronger than growth at either the top or the bottom of the distribution. Other aspects of university participation also changed: participation grew more strongly among females than males. We find no evidence that participation fell among 'marginal decision makers' - those who, while at school, said they did not intend to study at university. We conclude that HECS did not act to discourage university participation in general or among individuals from the lowest wealth groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Chapman & Chris Ryan, 2003. "The Access Implications of Income Contingent Charges for Higher Education: Lessons from Australia," CEPR Discussion Papers 463, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:463
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP463.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pagan,Adrian & Ullah,Aman, 1999. "Nonparametric Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521355643, October.
    2. Bruce Chapman & Chris Ryan, 2002. "Income-Contingent Financing of Student Charges for Higher Education: Assessing the Australian Innovation," CEPR Discussion Papers 449, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    3. Barr, Nicholas, 2001. "The Welfare State as Piggy Bank: Information, Risk, Uncertainty, and the Role of the State," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199246595.
    4. Garry F. Barrett & Thomas F. Crossley & Christopher Worswick, 2000. "Consumption and Income Inequality in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 76(233), pages 116-138, June.
    5. Chapman, Bruce, 1997. "Conceptual Issues and the Australian Experience with Income Contingent Charges for Higher Education," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(442), pages 738-751, May.
    6. repec:bla:ecorec:v:76:y:2000:i:233:p:116-38 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Cowell, F.A., 2000. "Measurement of inequality," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 87-166, Elsevier.
    8. Feldman, Roger, 1976. "Some More Problems with Income-contingent Loans: The Case of Medical Education," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1305-1311, December.
    9. Nerlove, Marc L, 1975. "Some Problems in the Use of Income-contingent Loans for the Finance of Higher Education," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(1), pages 157-183, February.
    10. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chapman, Bruce, 2006. "Income Contingent Loans for Higher Education: International Reforms," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 25, pages 1435-1503, Elsevier.
    2. Bruce Chapman, 2007. "Higher Education Financing in Australia," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 5(2), pages 55-61, 07.
    3. Rita Asplund & Oussama Ben Adbelkarim & Ali Skalli, 2008. "An equity perspective on access to, enrolment in and finance of tertiary education," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 261-274.
    4. Danny Ben-Shahar & Jacob Warszawski, 2016. "Inequality in housing affordability: Measurement and estimation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(6), pages 1178-1202, May.
    5. Pierre Courtioux, 2012. "How income contingent loans could affect the returns to higher education: a microsimulation of the French case," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 402-429, November.
    6. Louis Kaplow, 2005. "Why measure inequality?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 3(1), pages 65-79, April.
    7. Francesco Andreoli & Eugenio Peluso, 2016. "So close yet so unequal: Reconsidering spatial inequality in U.S. cities," Working Papers 21/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    8. Abul Naga, Ramses H. & Yalcin, Tarik, 2008. "Inequality measurement for ordered response health data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1614-1625, December.
    9. repec:lan:wpaper:2434 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Berlinger, Edina, 2002. "A jövedelemarányos törlesztésű diákhitel egyszerű modellje [A simple model of student credit with repayments proportionate to income]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1042-1062.
    11. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    12. Jo Thori Lind & Karl Moene, 2011. "Miserly Developments," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 1332-1352, June.
    13. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Bernard Van Praag, 2003. "Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(2), pages 107-127, August.
    14. Stephen P. Jenkins & Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Jeff Larrimore, 2009. "Measuring Inequality Using Censored Data: A Multiple Imputation Approach," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 866, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    15. Shahateet, Mohammed & Al-Tayyeb, Saud, 2007. "Regional consumption inequalities in Jordan: Empirical study," MPRA Paper 57400, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Geir B. Asheim & Wolfgang Buchholz, 2000. "The Malleability of Undiscounted Utilitarianism as a Criterion of Intergenerational Justice," CESifo Working Paper Series 392, CESifo.
    17. Eirini Andriopoulou & Eleni Kanavitsa & Chrysa Leventi, 2020. "The distributional impact of recurrent immovable property taxation in Greece," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 44(4), pages 505-528.
    18. Catherine, Sylvain & Yannelis, Constantine, 2023. "The distributional effects of student loan forgiveness," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 297-316.
    19. Francois, Joseph & Rojas-Romagosa, Hugo, 2005. "The Construction and Interpretation of Combined Cross-Section and Time-Series Inequality Datasets," CEPR Discussion Papers 5214, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Álvaro Labella & Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Cohard & José Domingo Sánchez-Martínez & Luis Martínez, 2020. "An AHPSort II Based Analysis of the Inequality Reduction within European Union," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-21, April.
    21. P. Jenkins, Stephen & A. Cowell, Frank, 2000. "Estimating welfare indices: household weights and sample design," ISER Working Paper Series 2000-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:463. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.