Social investment working group

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In this session of the Social Investment Working Group, Pol Barbé will present his research.

'Capturing intensity and scope: a new approach to measuring education investment effort in Europe'

Speaker: Pol Barbé (Ku Leuven)

Abstract: Education plays a pivotal role within the social investment paradigm by fostering the development of skills and capabilities and reinforcing synergies through the life course. Understanding the contribution of education to social investment objectives is hampered by limited measurement tools. This article addresses this limitation by introducing a novel indicator: the Education Investment Effort (EIE). The indicator advances the measurement of social investment in education in three important ways. First, it combines spending and coverage rates, two key dimensions of public provision that are often examined separately. Second, it provides information on spending per beneficiary across education levels. Third, it allows for systematic monitoring of education trends across European countries. In addition, we present a conceptual framework to explore the role of education within the broader social investment paradigm. Our results show that despite rhetorical commitments to the social investment approach, actual progress in education remains uneven. Furthermore, overall trends in EIE reveal that although investment per beneficiary has increased between 2013 and 2021, participation rates and public education provision have declined, especially at Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and tertiary levels. Finally, our findings underscore the critical role of education in sustaining the social investment state in Europe and highlight the need for improved metrics to understand the different dimensions and drivers of social investment goals

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