Fairly recent data for about one hundred countries indicate that as the average level of schooling increases, educational inequality first increases and, after reaching a peak, starts declining in later phases of educational expansion. The turning point occurs when average schooling is about...

Internationally comparable data on income and government expenditure for 115 countries, covering the period 1950-80, are used to assess the validity of Wagner's hypothesis. Individual country time-series data and several intercountry cross sections are studied. Besides a tremendous diversity in...