why voters veto vouchers public schools and community-specific social capital文档.pdfVIP

Economics of Governance (2006) 7: 109–132 DOI 10.1007/s10101-005-0005-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Why voters veto vouchers: public schools and community-specific social capital William A. Fischel Received: 20 January 2004 / Accepted: 24 January 2005 Published online: 21 February 2006 © Springer-Verlag 2006 Abstract This article explains voters‘ attachment to public education: the public benefit of local schools accrues to adults, not children. Having children in local schools increases parents’ “community-specific social capital.” Through local school connections, parents get to know other adults in their community better, which in turn reduces the transaction costs of citizen provision of local public goods. Vouchers would disperse students from their com- munities and thereby reduce localized social capital. Empirical evidence supporting this also explains the rise and fall of Robert Putnam’s national indicators of social capital, which have moved in lock-step with the number of children per household. JEL Classification Numbers H4 (public goods)· H7 (state and local finance)· I22 (education finance)· Z13 (social capital) Keywords Vouchers · Public education · Social capital · School districts “When death comes to a small town, the school is usually the last thing to go. A place can lose its bank, its tavern, its grocery store, its shoe shop. But when the school closes, you might as well put a fork in it.” New York Times, December 1, 2003, p. 1. 1. The public-goods puzzle of local public schools X Why are American primary and secondary schools provided largely in the local public sector and made equally and freely available to all who reside in the community? The eco- For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I thank without implicating Eric Brunner, Paul Carrington, Timothy Goodspeed, William Hoyt, Myron Lieberman, Robert Putnam, Lisa Snell, Jon Sonstelie, Michelle White, John Yinger, and two ananymous referees.