The Trend Analysis of Public Education Expenditure: A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis with Focus on Nepal

Abstract

Background
Public expenditure on education shapes human capital and long-run development, and this study situates Nepal’s public education spending within cross-country trends from 2000 to 2024 to benchmark it against developed, emerging, and South Asian peers. Yet a consolidated long-horizon comparison that accounts for post-federalization budgeting and the COVID-19 period remains scarce, obscuring Nepal’s relative performance and the scale of its financing shortfall.

Methods
Two indicators were analyzed using secondary time-series data from the World Bank: government education expenditure as a share of GDP and as a share of total government expenditure. Countries were grouped (developed, emerging, South Asia), and trends were summarized with descriptive trajectories and group comparisons based on Excel-processed series.

Results
Developed economies generally align with the GDP benchmark and show stable budget shares through 2020-2021; emerging economies display steady upward trajectories without a pronounced pandemic-year dip in the nominal series. Most South Asian systems remain below international reference ranges on one or both indicators. Nepal’s series lies between these poles, about 3 to 5 percent of GDP and roughly 10 to 22 percent of public outlays, indicating material effort that is frequently short of benchmark levels.

Conclusion
Benchmarks are informative signposts, but performance depends on sustaining real effort through shocks and on how funds are composed and executed. For Nepal, the comparative evidence points to a dual task: align finance levels more consistently with international reference ranges and strengthen spending quality so allocations translate into broad, durable gains in social and economic sectors.

Novelty
The study provides a comparative, benchmark-referenced trend profile for Nepal against developed, emerging, and South Asian groups, incorporating the 2020-2021 shock to aid interpretation while remaining focused on public-finance trends rather than causal claims.