Influence of education on living conditions of households

Abstract

The paper deals with the analysis of the effect of education on the income situation of households and inhabitants’ living standards. The increasing number of inhabitants with higher levels of education provides conditions for the creation and development of the knowledge or information society. Knowledge society is a society where an individual is able to seek information in information sources, to process and use the found information creatively and to consider knowledge one of the essential factors of life quality. In this society, the significance of education increases and the utilization of scientific findings becomes the key source of the society’s competitiveness. Its characteristic feature is the structure of GDP reflecting a growing proportion of knowledge assets in contrast to physical capital. Education and work of educated people are essential factors of economic development. It is desirable that the society has an implemented system of valuation for educated people by means of financial rewards. This paper aims to provide information about the income situation of households in dependence on particular levels of education: the primary education, two types of secondary education and tertiary education.The source for the analysis of the effect of the achieved level of education on the income situation of households is the results of the survey conducted by EU-SILC (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) in 2005–2009. The level of education of a household was determined based on the level of education of the household member with the highest income – the head of household.The analysis focused on the number of households in the Czech Republic (CR) with the specified achieved level of education and their income situation. The income situation is determined by middle values (mean and median), differentiation and development between 2005 and 2009, which was the period of economic development but also an economic crisis. Further, attention is devoted to households at risk of poverty, the depth of poverty, income disparities among groups based on the achieved level of education and the proportion of social transfers within the total incomes of each household group in dependence on the achieved level of education.