This paper analyzes the efficiency of public expenditure on education in
Benin from 2000 to 2020. Using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, the
paper calculates the efficiency of public expenditure on education for Benin as
well as for the other countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union
(WAEMU) in order to highlight the differences in the efficiency of the use of
public resources in education. The paper uses public expenditure on education
as an input and the gross enrolment ratio in primary school, the primary school
completion rate and the gross tertiary enrolment ratio as outputs for the DEA
model. The results indicate that the efficiency score of public expenditure on
education in Benin is 0.88. This shows that there is a high degree of
efficiency in education. Nevertheless, this result indicates that there is room
for improvement in the efficiency of public expenditure on education of 12% for
Benin. Also, a comparison of Benin’s efficiency score with those of the other
WAEMU countries shows that Benin’s score is outstripped by Togo’s (0.93) and
Guinea-Bissau’s (0.95). The efficiency scores for Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali,
Burkina Faso and Niger are estimated at 0.68, 0.67, 0.58, 0.56 and 0.51
respectively. The paper suggests that in WAEMU, Benin could draw inspiration
from the management of public expenditure on education in Togo and
Guinea-Bissau to better identify best practices and policies to improve the
efficiency of its public expenditure on education.
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