Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228538 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 2021/1
Publisher: 
Freie Universität Berlin, School of Business & Economics, Berlin
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes higher education funding in Germany from a distributional perspective. For this, I first compare the quantitative importance of different funding instruments, from free tuition to subsidized health insurance for students. I show that free tuition is, by far, the most important instrument. Then, I take a lifetime perspective and assess how individuals of different expected lifetime incomes benefit from higher education funding. I distinguish between different fields of study as there are large differences in both the expected lifetime earnings of graduating from a specific field and the social cost of tuition associated with each field. Finally, I focus exclusively on the instrument of subsidized tuition and simulate the introduction of different tuition fee schemes with income-contingent loans. While the distributional effects would be sizable in absolute terms, I estimate that they would cause few individuals to change their educational decisions.
Subjects: 
Higher education
Education finance
Dynamic microsimulation
JEL: 
C53
I22
I23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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