THE CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INCOME INEQUALITY AND EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Abstract

Rising income inequality over recent decades is a growing concern for policymakers worldwide, and has received increasing attention both from economists and in public debate. Rising inequality has been attributed to a range of factors, including educational inequality. On the other side, unequal opportunities in education are also one of the factors contributing to income inequality. Therefore, this paper will try to analyze the relationship between income inequality represented by the Gini index and educational achievement represented through PISA scores from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database. The panel of countries analyzed in this paper is composed of the 37 OECD countries, while the period of observation are the years 2015 and 2018, which are the years from the latest PISA testing.