Investment in education and household consumption

We test whether household non-durable consumption and in years of schooling are related, by exploiting a university reform that mostly changes the marginal costs of educational investment. The empirical results suggest that education is a production rather than a normal consumption good, producing mainly potential life-time gains. This finding implies that such reform which achieves its goal, not only positively affects the individuals’ human capital accumulation process but it also has the unintended positive effect to moderately boost consumption.