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The Link Between Economic Inequalities and Quality of Education: Evidence from Poland and Finland

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Abstract

In today’s world this gap between the richest and the poorest is constantly widening. This paper aims to examine the impact of this economic inequality on the quality of education in two selected European countries—Poland and Finland. The choice of countries is not accidental: Finland was chosen because it has one of the best-rated education systems in the world, while Poland was chosen to indicate potential solutions, the application of which, may improve the quality of education in our country. To demonstrate that economic inequalities have a significant impact on education, rather show that it is economic inequalities, and no other factors such as political and administrative decisions, that have a significant the regional level was taken as the reference level in the analysis.

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Data availability

The data analysed during the current study are available in the various list of repositories and articles, which are listed below: Gini coefficient for Poland is from article: Mowczan, D., Zróżnicowanie płacy w Polsce w ujęciu regionalnym i jej wpływ na proces wzrostu gospodarczego. Wiadomości Statystyczne nr 2/2015, Główny Urząd Statystyczny, Warszawa (2015), Gini coefficient for Finland was calculated based on data available from Statistics Finland from a database “Income differences and equalising impact of current transfers on income differences in the dwelling population by sub-regional unit, 1995–2020”, available via: https://www.stat.fi/index_en.html, Data used to calculate the Composite Index of Quality of Education for Finland is from databases of Vipunen—Education Statistics Finland. Those are available via: https://vipunen.fi/en-gb, Data used to calculate the Composite Index of Quality of Education for Poland is from databases of Statistics Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny). Required data on the regional level was taken from Local Bank Data. Those are available via: https://bdl.stat.gov.pl/BDL/start

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Correspondence to Marcel Świerkocki.

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Świerkocki, M. The Link Between Economic Inequalities and Quality of Education: Evidence from Poland and Finland. Interchange 55, 115–136 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-024-09516-z

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