Attitudes towards education spending when facing a fiscal trade-off: an analysis of stakeholders

Abstract Public investment in education is popular in advanced countries. This paper examines whether such public support prevails when individuals are asked to pay additional income taxes. Focusing on Spain, it draws on one original survey (with parents and young people aged 16–24) featuring a trade-off experiment to gauge individuals’ willingness to accept additional income taxes in exchange for increased education spending. Investigating the moderators of this trade-off, we explore how sociodemographic variables and personal evaluations of education influence attitudes. We find strong support for increased spending, yet this support is notably cost-sensitive in the presence of a fiscal trade-off. Our analysis shows that support diminishes when it affects individuals’ pockets across diverse groups and ideologies. We test whether evaluations of one's own/children’s schooling (egocentric) and assessment of the education system (sociotropic) curb cost sensitivity and find that the positive egocentric evaluations are the only parameter that robustly curbs cost sensitivity.