DEMAND FOR EDUCATION AND PRIVATE TUTORING IN TURKEY

Aysıt TANSEL (Middle East Technical University)
Fatma BIRCAN (Middle East Technical University)

Demand for education in Turkey presents special characteristics due to the existence of a university entrance examination. These characteristics are best revealed by the well-spread `private tutoring` phenomenon in the country. This prevalence of the private tutoring allows us to study the demand for education in the country in connection with household budget spending. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to elaborate the spending patterns of the households on child's education. To explore the determinants of private tutoring expenditures by households, we use a tobit model in addition to an OLS model, using varying family characteristics such as household income, father's occupation, mother's occupation, own house etc. as explanatory variables. Analysing the behaviour of parents in order to grant their children with better education and thus higher future income will clarify the attributes of inter-generational transfers in Turkey. We intend to distinguish whether inter-generational transfers take place among different generations of the family members who are alive only for altruistic purposes or such transfers are simply a result of trade among the family members through some implicit family norm. We also intend to highlight the absence of credit markets for the finance of education expenditures of the young despite the fact that private tutoring expenditures constitute a non-negligible share in the household budget expenditures.