Modeling the feedback dynamics between poverty and education opportunity

Abstract

Poverty is a persistent problem for most countries, including the United States, the EU countries and Turkey. This study is about the “vicious circle of poverty” among the working poor in Turkey, which has been considered a fundamental socio-economic problem in recent decades. The purpose of this study is defined at two levels. First, the thesis aims to build a generic system dynamics model of the interactions between the working poor and education opportunities. The biggest question is whether the poor will remain poor in following generations. In other words, whether there can be upper intergenerational socioeconomic mobility among the poor. Secondly, the model seeks to examine some of the policy options related to education aimed at alleviating or combating working poverty. The rise in privatized education is at the center of this study since the inequality in education opportunity has a vital influence on quality of employment, which is critical to tackling working poverty. The high capability to reach education services and equality in education opportunities are pre-conditions for high-skilled jobs. There is a huge discrepancy in the quality of education in Turkey. As a result, unemployment and unskilled employment have been an increasingly complex problem for the society. The results of the model verify that inequality in education opportunity can make it impossible for the poor to reach high-quality education services; hence suppressing the opportunity to join highly skilled and highly paid labor markets. The study shows that the lack of opportunity for better education and employment, in turn prevents the poor breaking the “circle of poverty”. Finally, the study investigates which educational policies can potentially help the poor break this vicious cycle.