The world community agrees on the conceptualizing nature of early childhood development. This was formulated in the Incheon Declaration and in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The most significant part of the early development concept is the pre-primary education, which covers early childhood educational development and pre-school programs. Society's investments in early childhood development are highly profitable as resources spent are much less than the return from them: according to some estimates, $1 spent on pre-primary education can gain from $4 to $17 of social return.
At the same time, financial resources, that countries can spent on education, are limited, especially after the latest financial crisis. In Ukraine, the situation is worsened by the domestic socio-economic crisis of 2013–2014. The article aims at grounding the ways of pre-primary education financing in Ukraine in the context of the implementation of early childhood development concept. The author assesses financial support for childcare, early childhood education and pre-school education programs in different countries. The comparative analysis showed a low level of financing and a negative trend in Ukraine, in particular compared with the neighboring EU-countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. This indicates a low financial viability of providing quality pre-school education services in Ukraine. If the trend remains, Ukraine will lag behind the average indicators of social returns from pre-school education, especially in comparison with developed economies.
The author substantiates the expediency of applying in Ukraine the measures aimed at supporting licensed private pre-school education institutions, in particular, simplifying the procedures for starting pre-school educational activities, state participation in financing licensed private pre-school institutions and applying innovative schemes for financing pre-school education based on public-private partnership.

Keywords: public funding of education, early childhood development investment, productive public spending, public support for families with children

The main approaches to the analysis of the impact of education on economic growth consist in assessing the link between economic growth indicators (GDP/GDP growth per capita) and three groups of educational indicators: quantitative ones (educational attainment – coverage of population by an education level), qualitative ones (standardized grades of students) and the amounts of educational funding. At the same time, educational attainment and the quality of knowledge obtained depend on the amount of educational funding. The article proves that there is a significant positive relationship between indicators of state funding of higher and secondary education per student and a country's total factor productivity. At the same time, there is no unified optimal scheme for the distribution of public funding between the educational levels: to accelerate the pace of economic growth, some countries prioritize primary education, others – secondary or higher education. As stated in the article, this depends on the country's technological level, the existing educational and professional structure of human capital, and such contextual factors, as the quality of institutions in the country. The article discusses practical approaches to financing various levels of education at the expense of public and private funds, where the latter are presented in the context of private funds, and state transfers to families with students – that is public-to-private transfers. The article concludes that public educational funding – both direct and in the form of public-to-private transfers – concidered at various levels, indicates prioritization of the specific educational and professional composition of human capital. The results of the study indicate the need to harmonize approaches to budgetary processes in the field of educational funding with a country's technological, qualificational, and institutional prerequisites, as well as with strategic forecasts of the socio-economic development of national economies.

Keywords:public funding of education, fiscal space, public-to-private transfers, economic growth, total factor productivity, world technological frontier

Public financing of education is one of the most important fiscal instruments for responding to the challenges of post-pandemic economic recovery. Investments in higher and vocational education form the basis for the growth of total factor productivity, and therefore economic growth. At the same time, in the context of austerity, which will determine the directions of the budgetary policy of developing countries in the medium term, the key directions of fiscal intensification of the factors of economic growth require identification. It is proposed to include indicators of return on investments in various levels of education to the toolkit for assessing the directions of state financing of education as one of the most important factors of post-pandemic economic recovery in conditions of austerity. Differences in estimated returns from different educational levels can be taken into account in the development of public policy for financing education. The article offers an approbation for Ukraine of the approach of the Centre for European Economic Research for calculating the return on investment in higher and vocational education. A feature of the proposed approach is the ability to simulate a sufficient amount of data on revenues of individuals in conditions of limited information. The calculations in the article are based, in addition to data on the level of wages of persons with higher and vocational education, on the amount of budgetary expenditures on education throughout the course of study per student, personal income tax rates, unemployment benefits and state social assistance per person. The proposed approach makes it possible to carry out scenario estimates of the return on investment in education based on macroeconomic forecasts and taking into account changes in tax legislation. It is found that in Ukraine the return on investment in higher and vocational education corresponds to the average values of the corresponding indicators for the OECD countries. The author outlines the guidelines of the proposed methodological approach and prospective areas for its application.
The publication is prepared within the research project on "The Fiscal Space Development for Economic Growth" (SR No. 0119U003650).

Keywords:public funding of education, return on investment in education, economic crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, state aid, tax revenues