Education Expenditure: Spending on A Future Economy
Form(ing) the Informal
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The United States and Mexico allocate similar percentages of their national GDP to education with the U.S. spending 7.2% and Mexico spending 6.3%. When translated to USD, this equates to the U.S. spending $871 billion (national GDP of 12.45 trillion USD). In Mexico, the expenditure on education is $48 billion (national GDP of $768.4 billion USD). Therefore, Mexico spends 18% of what the United States does on education. If the United States has roughly 303M people and Mexico has 109M in population then a comparison can be made across the number of people enrolled in the education system and to what level of education they are attaining. In the U.S. 60M students are enrolled in primary and secondary education with another 17.4M enrolled in post-secondary education. In Mexico, those numbers are 26M and 2M respectively. If both countries were educating for the same economy, then the numbers would be closer to a one-third/two-thirds relationship; however, they are not. Therefore, it can be said that Mexico is educating for a different sector considering the significantly smaller number of students enrolled in postsecondary education. In terms of funding, the U.S. is thusly spending approximately $14,530 per student in primary and secondary education as opposed to the $1,861(USD) that Mexico spends per student. This represents a difference in educating for a knowledge-based or service-based economy.
comparitive model of city-wide education expenditure
comparitive model of national education expenditure