Education in an aging society

Last week, TYL wrote about the need to change how our society funds education eliminating the reliance on local property taxes and ensuring an equitable funding base for every American student. This report highlights an additional issue that will face local schools in the coming years.

The basic premise of the paper is that as America ages there will be a shortage of revenue available for education. This is because an aging population will demand an increase in public services and the composition of personal income from taxable to non-taxable sources reducing the tax dollars available to spend supporting education. A issue further complicating this matter is that individuals without school-aged children are less likely to support referendums to increase local taxes to provide for education.

If we are to avoid long-term, structural deficits in educational funding, we must reform the tax-base for educational funding. In addition to shifting from a reliance on local taxes to state-based funding, we must also broaden the tax base.