These days, you can find plenty of people who make this argument: I don’t have any children in school so why should I have to pay high property taxes? A sociologist counters this common argument:

In their study, Neal and co-author Jennifer Watling Neal, assistant professor of psychology, analyzed the data from a Gallup survey of more than 20,000 people from 26 U.S. communities from Michigan to Florida to California. As part of the survey, participants were asked how satisfied they were with their communities and to rate the overall quality of their public schools.The researchers found a strong relationship between those who were satisfied with their communities and quality schools. This finding was not affected by gender, age, race, employment status or whether the participant owned or rented a home or had children in school…

Neal said this is likely due to two major reasons:

• Public schools offer amenities to the entire community such as adult education courses, after-hours computer labs, workout facilities, auditorium space for churches and other groups, and more.
• Public schools have the more indirect benefit of promoting relationships among neighborhood residents. These relationships lead to issues getting solved – such as broken streetlights, unplowed streets or crime problems – that benefit everyone.

Additionally, good schools are often seen as markers of a good community. I think this is often tied to ideas about class and race: if the schools are good, people think this is due to being in an upscale, quality community.

I would be interested to see if these researchers controlled for the socioeconomic status of the community. Are communities that are wealthier more or less likely to reject additional funding for schools? Are residents who are more able to pay for increased education funding the ones who are most resistant to it?

If all residents do benefit from better schools, what is the best way to pitch educational funding increases? Perhaps you could throw a study like this at them but I don’t think that would be enough…