TITLE:
A Macro-Level Analysis of Public Fiscal Effort and Its Regional Disparities in U.S. Education Policy (2006-2022)
AUTHORS:
Hüseyin Gürkan Abali
KEYWORDS:
Fiscal Effort, Education Finance, Educational Equity, State Structures, Regional Disparities, Neoliberalism, Critical Policy Studies
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.3,
March
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: This article examines the regional and temporal variations in public fiscal effort in education in the USA, which is a gauge of state-level investment in relation to economic capacity. Data from 2006 to 2022 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were examined, using information from the State Indicators Database (2025 edition). Using descriptive, regional, and multivariate analyses, long-term drops in fiscal effort in every region were found, with the West and Northeast seeing the biggest drops. Fiscal effort is consistently highest in the Northeast and lowest in the South and West. Two-way fixed effects panel models indicate that income-adjusted fiscal effort remains strongly associated with fiscal effort after controlling for unobserved state and year effects. Teacher salary parity exhibits a positive association with fiscal effort in specifications excluding income-adjusted effort, though its significance is sensitive to model specification.