Özet:

Increasing public education expenditures and improving the quality of education services are important in terms of ensuring fair income distribution and supporting sustainable economic growth policies. Public education expenditures aimed at increasing human capital accumulation are expected to have a reducing effect on income inequality together with economic growth. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of public education expenditures on income distribution (measured by the Gini coefficient) in 33 selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the 2010-2019 period, with panel data analysis. Although the long-term cointegration coefficient estimation results of AMG differ according to the countries on a unit basis, it was concluded that public education expenditures had a negative effect on income distribution, that is, reducing the level of income inequality, across the panel. This panel-wide result shows that public education expenditures have an effect on improving income distribution justice. Among the countries within the scope of the research, Germany, Denmark and Sweden are the countries that have the strongest effect on reducing income inequality on a unit basis. In addition, in the results of the causality analysis, it was determined that there is a weak causal relationship in the short term and a strong causality relationship in the long term from public education expenditures to income distribution. Research findings indicate that allocating more resources to education by the public sector may be a way to reduce the level of income inequality in a country.

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