Tom van Lier, Astrid De Witte, Olivier Mairesse, Joachim Hollevoet, Dimokritos Kavadias and Cathy Macharis
– The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the social relevance of school transport in Flanders, Belgium, by using a social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA).
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the social relevance of school transport in Flanders, Belgium, by using a social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA).
Design/methodology/approach
The use of a SCBA already showed to be an appropriate tool for the appraisal of transport projects as it generates a large amount of information on the investment and its return for society.
Findings
This paper clearly shows that organizing school transport is socially relevant, using a SCBA as a tool for evaluation. The analysis also provides insight in potential ways for improving school transport organization and financing and allows assessing whether further gains for society are possible. It reveals that the budget granted for the obligatory organization of school transport is not sufficient and that schools are generally forced to use part of their educational budget to be able to organize the (socially relevant) school transport.
Practical implications
Findings from this study can assist schools and organizers of school transport in improving their organization. It demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of the investment.
Originality/value
Not many socio-economic evaluations of school transport have been done in literature. This study supports the use of SCBA within this context, further developing its use to answer similar research questions.
Details
Keywords
A leading explanation for the growth of wage inequality is that greater use of information technology increased the demand for human capital. This paper identifies four different…
Abstract
A leading explanation for the growth of wage inequality is that greater use of information technology increased the demand for human capital. This paper identifies four different explanations for the relationships between computers, skills, and wages: computer-specific human capital, greater general human capital among computer users, greater general human capital for both users and nonusers due to contextual effects, and skill-biased changes in the job composition of the workforce. The paper tests the first three explanations and finds little support for them once pre-computer and other job characteristics are adequately controlled. This conclusion receives further support from a comparison of the timing of inequality growth and computer diffusion and from analyses of the contribution of computer use to overall inequality growth using DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux's (1996) reweighting standardization technique.