with original information available at the regional level to construct region-specific averages, Tajikistan is the country where the variation was the largest, with the highest unitary benefit on education being sevenfold that of the region with the lowest unitary benefit. Similarly, there are large differences in terms of the private contribution toward education that households incur by having their children in public schools. In Paraguay, that proportion is 260 percent (for primary education), while in Côte d’Ivoire, it is 67 percent—that is, on average, contributions exceed benefits, for a joint distribution of primary and secondary education. However, these averages conceal significant differences across types of households classified by either their incomes or opportunities realized. Figures 1–6 show those differences.<sup>19</sup> There are several outstanding results arising from the joint BIA and OIA. First, the BIA reveals that aggregate gross public spending on education (across all education levels and age groups considered) tends to be either regressive or neutral (figures 1a to 6a). In particular, the _average_ public education benefit per child does increase as welfare levels increase in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Thailand, while remains (close to) uniform in Paraguay, Tajikistan, and Zambia.<sup>20</sup> Private contributions by households with children of school age tend, instead, to be progressive (Liberia is the only exception, with a decreasing but nonlinear pattern)<sup>21</sup> : that is, households’ contributions toward their children’s schooling rise as the welfare of the household increases. In other words, richer households contribute more toward the (also public) education of their children than poorer households do.

> 19 Note that the _average_ unitary benefits and _average_ unitary household contributions reported in those figures capture the benefit and household contributions for children of the appropriate age and quintile resulting from averaging the benefits and contributions of both those children who go to public schools and those who do not go to public schools. That is, they represent the average benefit and cost of each child in the quintile.

> 20 Part of the unambiguous regressivity in average gross unitary spending in **Côte d’Ivoire** and **Liberia** can be explained by having the lower enrollment levels, which means that as poor children attend less school, they tend to lower more the average benefit for their respective quintiles. Instead, in **Tajikistan** , enrollment is high; there are no large differentials across quintiles; virtually no private enrollment; and information does not allow for level-specific benefits. All these factors lead to little variation in the distributive profile of public spending. In **Thailand** , instead, variation is much larger, both for levels and large regions. It also has a high enrollment rate, but public spending on education disproportionately goes to Bangkok, the less populated and less poor “region” of the country. Larger benefits (and also larger private contributions) concentrate in the richest quintile and relatively little variation takes place in the rest. In **Paraguay** , there is a combination of factors compensating each other and leading to a neutral distribution of gross unitary public spending. As indicated later, profiles are different for elemental and secondary public spending, thus contributing to a uniform distribution. Also, poorer households concentrate in low-populated, rural and geographically isolated provinces, which tend to receive disproportionately large public education transfers per student from the central administration, partially reflecting higher salaries for their teachers. Instead, the most populous and richer regions in the country receive lower than average unitary transfers. This is especially true for primary education. While this is also true for secondary education, higher enrollment in those regions compensates for the fact that they receive lower unitary transfers. In **Zambia** , as in Paraguay, the neutral profile of the average unitary spending on education masks a progressive primary and regressive secondary public spending, with the richest quintiles in secondary capturing 40 percent of benefits in that level. For primary spending, the poorer quintiles capture more benefits, but there are also those with the largest nonattendance rates, which compensate for their larger benefits. Again, these factors counteract each other when aggregated.

21 Liberia is a special case for a number of reasons, including, among others, a civil war that devastated school infrastructure, used children and teenagers of school age as combatants, and killed thousands of parents. Its educational sector disproportionately depends on foreign aid (and its variations) and it is tiny, both in relative terms (as percent of gross domestic product [GDP]) and absolute terms, both compared with the region and even among conflict countries. Finally, Liberia has a disproportionally high share of students in the private education system (not considered here), which includes community schools, mission schools, and schools established by private sector organizations and large corporations (World Bank 2010).

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