Household Educational Expenditure and its Determinants

Published on Thursday, 05 July 2012 02:49

The Education Economics Unit has recently completed another pilot study - "Household Educational Expenditure and its Determinants". The main objective of this study was to develop a methodological basis for the implementation of a more extensive research on household spending and time budget allocation for education and child care. Due to their relevance the objectives of the pilot study were extended to include not only the identification of the types of expenses related to the education of children but also all the issues related to time allocation - how much time children spent in kindergarten or learning in school, and how they spent time together with their parents. Based on these specific categories of expenditure and time allocation a preliminary classification of both was suggested.

The results of the study showed how the monthly amount of educational spending increases with the level of the child's education. The older the child and the higher the level of its education, the greater the expenses on her/his education. However, there is an exception regarding kindergartens (children aged 3-5), which, being nonobligatory in Poland, are fee-based and generate relatively high amount of household expenditure comparable to the one typical of middle-school-aged children (13-15). From the time budget perspective, it should be noted that the children and young people
from the surveyed households spent most of the waking time in the nursery, school or college. It was observed that children and young people from rural areas devote more time to media consumption than their city counterparts.
The higher the parent's education, the more time the child spent on social activities rather than activities related to media consumption.