Search Results
Journal Article
New Jersey’s Abbott districts: education finances during the Great Recession
Funding for New Jersey?s low-income school districts tumbled in the most recent recession, and the Abbott districts?a group of poor urban districts that for almost two decades received special appropriations from the state?were hit especially hard. A comparison with the state?s other low-income districts reveals that the Abbott districts faced markedly sharper declines in aid, relative to trend. Consequently, while all of the low-income districts responded to the drop in state aid by scaling back spending on support services and utilities, only the Abbott group also made significant cuts in ...
Report
Abbott and Bacon Districts: education finances during the Great Recession
In the State of New Jersey, any child between the age of five and eighteen has the constitutional right to a thorough and efficient education. The State of New Jersey also has one of the country?s most rigid policies regarding a balanced budget come fiscal end. When state and local revenues took a big hit in the most recent recession, officials had to make tough decisions about education spending. This paper exploits rich panel data and trend-shift analysis to analyze how school finances in the Abbott and Bacon School Districts, as well as the high-poverty districts in general, were affected ...
Report
Negative equity and housing investment
Housing is a depreciating asset. The rate of depreciation depends on the degree to which households engage in housing investments. Housing investment expenditures economy-wide are sizable, averaging 45 percent of the value of new home construction over the past twenty years. The housing bust and recession coincided with a significant decline in housing investment. Using Consumer Expenditure Survey data from 2007 to 2012, we find that negative equity households reduce their housing investments by roughly 75 percent. The large increase in negative equity due to declining housing prices during ...
Report
Precarious slopes? The Great Recession, federal stimulus, and New Jersey schools
While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions, on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools have a fundamental role in fostering human capital formation and economic growth. We exploit unique panel-data and trend-shift analysis to analyze how New Jersey school finances were affected during the Great Recession and the ARRA federal stimulus ...
Discussion Paper
Tough Decisions, Depleted Revenues: Analysis of New Jersey Education Finances during the Great Recession
Today’s post, which complements Monday’s on New York State, considers the Great Recession’s impact on education funding in New Jersey. Using analysis published in our recent staff report, “Precarious Slopes? The Great Recession, Federal Stimulus, and New Jersey Schools,” we examine how school finances were affected during the recession and the ARRA federal stimulus period. We find strong evidence of a significant decline—relative to trend—in school revenues and expenditures following the recession as well as key compositional changes that could affect school financing and ...
Journal Article
Precarious slopes? The Great Recession, federal stimulus, and New Jersey schools
While only a sparse literature investigates the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research on the effect on schools. This article starts to fill the void. The authors make use of rich panel data and a trend-shift analysis to study how New Jersey school finances were affected by the onset of the recession and the federal stimulus that followed. Their results show strong evidence of downward shifts in total school funding and expenditures, relative to trend, following the recession. Support of more than $2 billion in American Recovery and ...
Discussion Paper
How Did Education Financing in New Jersey’s Abbott Districts Fare during the Great Recession?
In the state of New Jersey, any child between the ages of five and eighteen has the constitutional right to a thorough and efficient education. The state also has one of the country’s most rigid policies regarding a balanced budget. When state and local revenues took a big hit in the most recent recession, officials had to make tough decisions about education spending. In this post, we analyze education financing and spending in two groups of high-poverty districts during the Great Recession and the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) federal stimulus period—the Abbott ...