Estimating the future local public school expenditures in Japan - the impacts of scale diseconomies and the change in faculty age structure -

Decrease in the future number of students due to the low birth rate could affect public educational expenditures in Japan? Is there any regional difference? This paper simulates the future amount of local public primary, junior high, and high school expenditures in each Japanese prefecture. More specifically, we focus on faculty costs which consist of quite a large share of school expenditures. We examine the effect of economies of scale through the change in class/school size, and the impact of the shift in the faculty age distribution on the future faculty costs per student. We also investigate regional disparities concerning the future fiscal burden.