Monica Haddad

The fact that Iowa's rural areas have lost population over the past decades is a well documented problem. It is also well known that migration into a community may depend on amenities like school quality, public parks, roads or subsidies to recruit firms. Therefore, local public finance decisions can affect the in-migration and outmigration processes.

Our long-run research goal is to support local public finance decisions related to rural community development. In particular, in this research project we will apply spatial statistics to examine the relationship between student performance and funding for education in the state of Iowa and some of its neighboring states. Spatial statistics accounts for specific location of spatial units of analysis, which in our case are the school districts and counties. The findings will provide an understanding of the distribution of funding for education and effectiveness of school system in Iowa and in some of its neighboring states. This pilot study will serve as a foundation for future work towards the general problem of public finance allocation.