CHAPTER 3 School Quality, Clustering, and Government Subsidy
eography becomes critical when access to opportunities is distributed unevenly over space. For example, when good schools are concen- trated in urban areas, one must live in these areas to have good educational opportunities and therefore good job prospects. In South Africa, which experienced nearly more than 40 years of apartheid, different popu- lation groups were segregated in separate residential areas with unequal access to education.1 As a result, location was a critical factor. This chapter examines how spatial factors, highly correlated with historical factors, are determining school quality in post-apartheid South Africa. Two factors are relevant to the way in which school quality is deter- mined. First, the legacy of apartheid imposes historical constraints on the spatial distribution of income and population groups. Good schools are located in selected areas. This has maintained interracial diversity in access to good education, as well as racial and socioeconomic homogeneity within neighborhoods.2
G
Second, even if the mobility of populations was unrestricted after the abolition of apartheid, household-level financial constraints coupled with the imperfect credit market often prevent the poor from moving into those well-off areas that offer better educational opportunities. Thus the opportu- nity for better education is geographically correlated with land prices.3 Even though African children can commute to formerly white schools, in so doing
This chapter is reproduced in part from an article in the journal Economics of Education Review
(Yamauchi 2010). 1 For accounts of the general situation in South African education, see Kriege et al. (1994); Crouch (1996); Bot, Wilson, and Dove (2000); Shindler and Fleisch (2007); van der Berg (2007); Bloch et al. (2008); and Fleisch (2008). As van der Berg (2007) argues, race still remains a major
factor in explaining school performance. 2 Yamauchi (2007a) discussed the importance of observed neighborhood heterogeneity for agents’ learning about returns to schooling and deciding on schooling investment. Whether a
society is heterogeneous or homogeneous has dynamic implications. 3 This point has not yet been seriously examined, though casual observations support this proposition.
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