지방교육재정교부금 산정방식의 개편 필요성과 장기 재정여력 개선효과

Abstract

This study examined why and how to reform local education subsidy whose total amount is automatically set as the sum of 20.79% of central government internal tax revenues and the part of education tax revenue that is left after transferring to the special account for early childhood education support. It also proposes a reasonable and stable scheme for financing the primary and secondary education with its estimated impact on fiscal space by 2060. Even if primary and secondary education investment is very important, it should be expanded steadily with proper consideration of both fiscal space and national priorities. The proposed scheme will insure that the central government spending on the primary and secondary education increases within the extent of income growth and inflation and also reflects the changes in the ratio of school-age population. With this new scheme, it is forecasted that the central government debt ratio to GDP in 2060 will be reduced by 28.2%p from 144.8% to 116.6%. It is very clear that the current free primary and secondary education is not free at all in the era that central government debt continues to accumulate according to population aging, since, in the future, those students should take over the financial burden of population aging and at least the part of their free education costs.