Estimating the demand for education

What causes individuals to demand more education? The widely held opinion is that private schools are better than public schools, so this question can be looked at by estimating the factors that influence the demand for private and parochial schools. This paper will supplements existing literature through the use of panel data, racial subsets, and the addition of variables measuring the youth\u27s Body Mass Index, number of lifetime residences, and whether the youth attended childcare. The results tend to support previous literature, though the addition of racial subsets highlights some interesting results. The most interesting being that parental religiosity is highly significant for white individuals but significant for blacks and Hispanics. Of the new variables, attending childcare as a youth is significant for both private and parochial schools while the total number of residences is significant for only private schools