|
on Education |
|
Issue of 2016‒02‒17
forty-five papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Elsner, Benjamin; Isphording, Ingo |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high-school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting exogenous variation in cohort composition. We nd that a student's ordinal rank in high-school signi cantly affects educational outcomes later in life. If two students with the same ability have a different rank in their respective cohort, the student with the higher rank is signi cantly more likely to nish high-school, to attend college, and to complete a 4-year college degree. These results suggest that students under- invest in their human capital if they have a low rank within their cohort even though they have a high ability compared to most students of the same age. Exploring potential channels, we nd that students with a higher rank have higher expectations about their future career, and feel that they are being treated more fairly by their teachers. |
| JEL: | I23 I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112928&r=edu |
| By: | Warning, Susanne; Dürrenberger, Nicole |
| Abstract: | This article examines the relationship between corruption and years of schooling, considering the role of enrollment in private and public higher education institutions. Based on human capital theory, we predict different years of schooling, depending on corruption and the role of private higher education. Using data from 170 countries, we confirm find that corruption is negatively related to expected years of schooling. Second, we illustrate that the relationship depends on the fraction of students enrolled in private higher education. More specifically, we find that the negative effect of corruption on years of schooling is significant only in countries with small percentages of enrollment in private higher education institutions. Third, we show that the effect of private higher education on expected years of schooling depends on corruption levels: At low levels of corruption, private higher education decreases expected years of schooling; at high levels of corruption, private higher education increases expected years of schooling. A better understanding of the interrelation between corruption and higher education financing contributes to the coordination of educational policies to improve expected years of schooling and human capital in a country. |
| JEL: | H52 I21 I23 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112836&r=edu |
| By: | Dörsam, Michael; Lauber, Verena |
| Abstract: | A recent education reform in Germany reduced the duration of high school by one year, but left the curriculum unchanged. We use a unique data set on university students to investigate the effects of this reform on academic achievement at the tertiary level. By applying a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we isolate the causal effect of the reform from cohort and state effects. We find that the first cohort of treated students performed slightly worse in their first semesters, while we find no effects for the second cohort of treated students. The negative effects on the students of the first cohort are mainly driven by male as well as lower-ability students. Overall, our results suggest that the reform has improved the efficiency of the German high school system. |
| JEL: | I21 J18 C21 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112876&r=edu |
| By: | Anger, Silke; Dahmann, Sarah |
| Abstract: | Western labor markets face major challenges caused by demographic changes. They increasingly experience a shortage of skilled workers and face the problem of an increasing disparity between a reduced group of active workers contributing to the pension scheme and a rising share of an older population receiving pension benefits. Starting in 2001, Germany therefore introduced an educational reform enabling high school graduates earlier labor market entry. By shortening the length of upper secondary school leaving the overall curriculum unchanged, the reform did not only make German graduates more competitive on the international labor market and reduce costs in the German education system, but also increased the labor force by one birth cohort, relieving the shortage of skilled workers and disburdening the pension scheme. However, the reform may have led to unintended consequences on individuals' human capital. This paper investigates this reform's short-term effects on students' personality exploiting the variation in high school duration over time and across states as a quasi-natural experiment. Using rich data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study on adolescents' Big Five personality traits and on their locus of control, our estimates show that shortening high school caused students on average to be less emotionally stable. Moreover, the personality of male students and students from disrupted families changed more strongly following the reform: they became more agreeable and more extroverted, respectively. We conclude that the educational system plays a role in shaping adolescents' personality, which in turn impacts labor market success and further later life outcomes. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112902&r=edu |
| By: | Eleonora Patacchini (Cornell University); Edoardo Rainone (Banca d'Italia); Yves Zenou (Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether, how, and why individual education attainment depends on the educational attainment of schoolmates. Specifically, using longitudinal data on students and their friends during the school years in a nationally representative set of US schools, we consider the impact of different types of peers on education outcomes. We find that there are strong and persistent peer effects in education, but peers tend to be influential in the long run only when their friendships last more than one year. This evidence is consistent with a network model where convergence of preferences and the emergence of social norms among peers require long-term interactions. |
| Keywords: | spatial autoregressive model, heterogeneous spillovers, 2SLS estimation, Bayesian estimation, education |
| JEL: | C31 D85 Z13 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1048_16&r=edu |
| By: | Schwerdt, Guido; Chingos, Matthew M. |
| Abstract: | Online education options have proliferated in recent years, with significant growth occurring at state-sponsored virtual schools. However, there is no prior credible evidence on the quality of virtual courses compared to in-person courses in U.S. secondary education. We compare the performance of students who took core courses in algebra and English at their traditional public high school to the performance of students who took the same courses through the Florida Virtual School, the largest state virtual school in the U.S. We find that FLVS students are positively selected in terms of prior achievement and demographics, but perform about the same or somewhat better on state tests once their pre-high-school characteristics are taken into account. We find little evidence of treatment effect heterogeneity across a variety of student subgroups, and no consistent evidence of negative impacts for any subgroups. Differences in spending between the sectors suggest the possibility of a productivity advantage for FLVS. |
| JEL: | I28 I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113202&r=edu |
| By: | Ou, Dongshu (Chinese University of Hong Kong); Zhao, Zhong (Renmin University of China) |
| Abstract: | We examine the causal impact of China's higher education expansion on labor market outcomes for young college graduates using China's 2005 1% Population Sample Survey. Exploiting variation in the expansion of university spots across provinces and high school cohorts and applying a difference-in-differences model, we find that the expansion of higher education in China decreases unemployment rates, especially among males and high school graduates. However, the policy also decreases women's labor force participation and individual earnings in highly-skilled white-collar jobs. We further discuss potential channels affecting the observed outcomes. Our results illustrate the strong demand for a skilled labor force in China and the broad economic benefits of higher education. |
| Keywords: | higher education expansion, labor force participation, unemployment, wage, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | I23 I28 J31 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9643&r=edu |
| By: | Yamada, Gustavo (Universidad del Pacifico); Lavado, Pablo (Universidad del Pacifico); Martínez, Joan J. (Universidad del Pacifico) |
| Abstract: | Despite the high growth of the Peruvian economy during the last decade, college graduates are facing increasing difficulties to find occupations that match their higher educational background, skills and educational investments. This scenario is embodied in the "professional underemployment" condition by which 4 out of 10 college graduates, by 2012, are overeducated, occupying non-professional and sub-paid positions. We propose that the deterioration in higher education quality has been a trigger for the increase in underemployment of university graduates, as an alternative to the literature that analyzes its causes related to labor demand. The main objective is to explore and quantify the extent to which higher education quality contributes to professional underemployment in Peru. Using data from the National Household Survey for the period 2004-2012 and the National University Census for the years 1996 and 2010, we propose a discrete choice model that measures the impact of college quality on the individual condition of underemployment in the long run. The source of variability for identifying this effect is the institutional and legal process of deregulation of universities initiated in the nineties. Our results indicate that the probability of being underemployed among graduates who attended "lower quality" universities increased from 0.19 to 0.30 beginning the college market deregulation. These estimation consider a twofold effect of deregulation, over the quality of university to which university applicants are prone to attend and in the probability of acquiring university education among individuals with lower academic skills. |
| Keywords: | discrete choice models, employment determination, occupational choice, human capital, professional labor markets and occupation, unemployment |
| JEL: | C21 J23 J24 J44 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9591&r=edu |
| By: | Zölitz, Ulf |
| Abstract: | This paper shows how the classroom gender composition and teacher gender affect achievement in university education. Identification is based on random assignment of staff and students to teaching sections. A higher fraction of females in the classroom increases academic performance of females, but only when instructors are female as well. Consistent with the idea of gender role models female staff raises female students course performance. Both female and male students perform better when the best student in class has the same gender. Strikingly exposure to a higher share of female instructors increases female s probability to enroll in a PhD program. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112802&r=edu |
| By: | Tansel, Aysit (Middle East Technical University) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to provide information on intergenerational educational mobility in Turkey over the last century (at least over the last 65 years). This is the first study explicitly on providing the association between parents' and children's education in Turkey over time unlike the previous studies of one point in time. Given the absence of longitudinal data, we make use of a unique data set on educational outcomes based on children recall of parental education. The data used is the result of Adult Education Survey of 2007. Several findings emerge from the analysis. First of all, children's and parents' educational outcomes are correlated. The intergenerational educational coefficient of the mothers is somewhat larger than that of the fathers. The intergenerational educational coefficients of both the mothers and the fathers decrease over the cohorts implying that intergenerational educational mobility increased significantly for the younger generations of children in Turkey. The chances of attaining a university degree for the children increases as fathers' completed schooling level increases. Men's chances of attaining high school or university education are substantially higher than that of women's. The association between parent and child education is stronger when parent educational background is poor. The results imply that the policy makes should focus on children with poor parental educational background and on women. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational mobility, educational transmission, Turkey |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J11 J62 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9590&r=edu |
| By: | Dahmann, Sarah |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence: the role of instructional quantity and the timing of instruction with respect to age. To identify causal effects, I exploit a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment: between 2001 and 2007, academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced by one year in most of Germany's federal states, leaving the overall curriculum unchanged. To investigate the impact of this educational change on students' cognitive abilities, I conduct two separate analyses: first, I exploit the variation in the curriculum taught to same-aged students at academic-track high school over time and across states to identify the effect of the increase in instructional time on students' crystallized and fluid intelligence scores. Using rich data on seventeen year-old adolescents from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, the estimates show that fluid intelligence remained unaffected, while crystallized intelligence improved for male students. Second, I compare students' competences in their final year of high school using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Preliminary results suggest that students affected by the reform catch up with their non-affected counterparts in terms of their competences by the time of graduation. However, they do not provide any evidence for the timing of instruction to matter in cognitive skill formation. Overall, secondary education therefore seems to impact students' cognitive skills in adolescence especially through instructional time and not so much through age-distinct timing of instruction. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112917&r=edu |
| By: | Puhani, Patrick |
| Abstract: | With girls having overtaken boys in many education indicators, the feminization of elementary school teaching is causing debates across the globe about disadvantages for male students. Using administrative panel data on the universe of students, teachers and schools for a German state, I exploit within school and within teacher variation to determine teacher characteristics effects on students tracking outcomes. Germany tracks students at age 10 into more or less academic school types. I find hardly any effects of teacher s gender, age, pay level, qualifications, or working hours on boys or girls school track recommendations or school choice. Even when following students into middle school, no effects of teacher gender on school type change or grade repetition can be detected. |
| JEL: | I21 J45 J78 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113167&r=edu |
| By: | Meyer, Tobias; Thomsen, Stephan |
| Abstract: | Most German states have reformed university preparatory schooling by reducing duration from 13 to 12 years with unchanged graduation requirements. The reform was implemented in the states during the last decade in several consecutive years. In this paper, we use nationwide data on high school graduates to evaluate the reform effects on post-school education decisions. The results show that the reform has reduced (or at least delayed) university enrollment of females, but increased the probability of starting vocational education. A similar trend is found for male students, but only in the first year after school graduation. In addition, students are slightly more likely to do voluntary service or spend a year abroad after high school graduation. |
| JEL: | I21 J18 C21 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112910&r=edu |
| By: | Bredtmann, Julia; Smith, Nina |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate sibling correlations in educational outcomes, which serve as a broad measure of the importance of family and community background. Making use of rich longitudinal survey and register data for Denmark, our main aim is to identify the parental background characteristics that are able to explain the resemblance in educational outcomes among siblings. We find sibling correlations in educational outcomes in the range of 15 to 33 percent, suggesting that up to a third of the variation in educational achievement can be explained by family and community background. Our results further reveal that parents socio-economic background (i.e., their education, occupation, and income) can explain up to 44 percent of the sibling correlation. However, non-economic factors such as family structure, the incidence of social problems, and parents educational preferences also play an important role for sibling similarities in educational outcomes. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J13 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112861&r=edu |
| By: | Tani, Massimiliano (University of New South Wales) |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits a quasi-experiment to shed light on whether the wage penalty experienced by migrants reflects poor schooling quality in the country of education or employers' discrimination in the host country. The quasi-experiment is the possibility for migrants to undertake an official assessment of their foreign qualifications, and remove the uncertainty surrounding the educational curriculum completed abroad. Data about the assessment can be used together with indicators of where education was completed to test empirically which determinant most affects the returns to foreign education. Since the assessment is a choice it is instrumented with a measure of relative distance between awareness of degrees awarded in the country of education and the host country. The analysis is based on the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia. The results suggest that undertaking the assessment raises the returns of foreign education, offsetting the penalty for being educated abroad. The assessment's effect weakens over time, as employers observe migrants' productivity. The effect of where schooling is completed also trends upwards over time. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of statistical discrimination due to the imperfect information about migrants' educational credentials. Adding a local signal appears to be effective in easing immigrants' economic assimilation and improve the international transferability of their human capital. |
| Keywords: | immigration, foreign education, statistical discrimination |
| JEL: | J24 J61 J70 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9597&r=edu |
| By: | Herber, Stefanie |
| Abstract: | If information asymmetries prevent talented students of non-academic backgrounds from applying for merit-based aid, the full potential of qualified youth will not be unfolded and social selectivity is likely to corroborate. This paper analyzes whether information asymmetries exist and decrease students' likelihood to apply for merit-based scholarships. In a randomized field experiment, I exposed more than 5,000 German students either to general information on federally funded scholarships or additionally to tailored information on details of the application process, conveyed by a similar role model. The role model treatment did significantly increase non-academic and male students' application probabilities for federally funded merit-based scholarships. Providing only general information on the scholarship system triggered participants' own information search for alternative funding sources and increased application rates for other, not federally funded scholarships. |
| JEL: | I22 I24 D83 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113058&r=edu |
| By: | Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola (Goethe University Frankfurt); Masella, Paolo (University of Sussex) |
| Abstract: | Political regimes influence contents of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in East Germany after reunification. Our identification strategy utilizes cutoff birth dates for school enrollment that lead to variation in the length of exposure to the socialist education system within the same birth cohort. An additional year of socialist education decreases the probability of obtaining a college degree and affects longer-term male labor market outcomes. |
| Keywords: | socialist education, non-meritocratic access restrictions, labor market success |
| JEL: | I25 J24 P36 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9678&r=edu |
| By: | Paloyo, Alfredo R. (University of Wollongong); Rogan, Sally (University of Wollongong); Siminski, Peter (University of Wollongong) |
| Abstract: | While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the "gold standard" for impact evaluation, they face numerous practical barriers to implementation. In some circumstances, a randomized-encouragement design (RED) is a viable alternative, but applications are surprisingly rare. We discuss the strengths and challenges of RED and apply it to evaluate a mature Supplemental Instruction (SI) or PASS (Peer Assisted Study Session) program at an Australian university. A randomly selected subgroup of students from first-year courses (𝑁 = 6954) was offered large incentives (worth AUD 55,000) to attend PASS, which increased attendance by an estimated 0.47 hours each. This first-stage (inducement) effect did not vary with the size of the incentive and was larger (0.89) for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Instrumental variable estimates suggest that one hour of PASS improved grades by 0.065 standard deviations, which is consistent with the non-experimental literature. However, this estimate is not statistically significant, reflecting limited statistical power. The estimated effect is largest for students in their first semester at university. |
| Keywords: | Australia, randomized-encouragement design, student outcomes, peer-assisted study session, supplemental instruction, selection bias |
| JEL: | C93 I21 I23 I24 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9696&r=edu |
| By: | Fuchs, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | A growing body of research suggests that, even after controlling for cognitive abilities, personality predicts economic success in later life. The learning environment at school focuses on knowledge and cognitive skills. The transmission of character skills, however, is not at the center of attention. Leisure activities as informal learning activities outside of school may affect the formation of personality. E.g. working while attending school is seen as a stepping stone toward independence and adulthood and can foster important character skills by providing opportunities to promote responsibility and further character skills. However, the channel of the positive influence has not been identified empirically. I suggest that employment during adolescence affects character skills that are known to have a positive effect on labor market outcomes and educational achievements. Employing a flexible strategy involving propensity score matching combined with regression adjustment, I find beneficial effects on character skills. Working while attending secondary school leads to a higher internal locus of control. In addition to promoting character skills, teenage employment improves knowledge on which skills and talents school students have and also the importance of parents' advices with respect to their future career. These results are robust to several model specifications and varying samples and robust to including family-fixed effects. |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113030&r=edu |
| By: | Weinhardt, Felix; Faber, Benjamin; Sanchis-Guarner, Rosa |
| Abstract: | Governments around the world are making it a priority to upgrade information and communication technologies (ICT) with the aim to increase available internet connection speeds. This paper proposes a new empirical methodology to estimate the causal effect of these policies, and applies it to the question of how upgrades in ICT affect educational attainment. We draw on a new and unique collection of UK microdata that allows us for the first time to link administrative test score records for the population of English primary and secondary school students to the available ICT at their home addresses. To base estimations on exogenous variation in ICT, we notice that capacity constraints at telephone exchange stations lead to invisible and essentially randomly placed boundaries of station-level catchment areas that give rise to substantial and discontinuous jumps in the available ICT across space. Using this design across more than 20 thousand boundary segments in England, we find that even very large changes in available internet connection speeds have a precisely estimated zero effect on educational attainment, and that the estimates are causally identified: house prices, student socioeconomic characteristics and local amenities are flat across the boundaries. Guided by a simple theoretical framework we then bring to bear additional microdata on student time use and internet use to quantify the microeconomic channels underlying the zero reduced form effect. We find that faster connection speeds lead to a significant increase in student consumption of online content, but do not affect the amount of time spent online or the amount of time spent studying. We conclude that the elasticity of student demand for online content with respect to its per unit time cost is negative but bounded at -1, and that increased consumption of online content has no effect on learning productivity per unit of time spent studying. |
| JEL: | I21 D83 F15 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113105&r=edu |
| By: | Polidano, Cain (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research); Tabasso, Domenico (University of Geneva) |
| Abstract: | The tracking of students in upper-secondary school is often criticised for narrowing the career prospects of student in the vocational education and training (VET) track, which in many countries leads to the stigmatisation of VET courses. To tackle this problem, Australia blurred the lines between the two tracks by introducing VET courses that count to both a national VET qualification and university entry. In this study, we estimate the impacts of taking these courses on academic achievement and university entry using administrative data, propensity score matching and a decomposition method developed especially. We find that among those who intend to go to university, taking a VET course is associated with 5 percent lower academic achievement, due mainly to relatively weak achievement in VET, and an 8 percentage point lower chance of receiving a university offer. These findings tell a cautionary tale on the merits of integrating VET and academic courses. |
| Keywords: | propensity score matching, university access, vocational education and training |
| JEL: | I20 I23 J24 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9694&r=edu |
| By: | Wößmann, Ludger; Fack, Oliver; Mang, Constantin |
| Abstract: | Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more effective teaching practices. Our correlated random effects models exploit within-student between-subject variation in different computer uses in the international TIMSS test. We find positive effects of using computers to look up information and negative effects of using computers to practice skills, resulting in overall null effects. Effects are smaller for low-SES students and mostly confined to developed countries. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 I20 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113157&r=edu |
| By: | Stijepic, Damir |
| Abstract: | I derive a measure of job mobility that reflects individuals ability to sort into the preferred jobs. Relying on the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that educational attainment tends to have a strong positive effect on internal (i.e., within firms) and external (i.e., between firms) job mobility. General experience and occupation-specific human capital have only a limited effect on both internal and external mobility. The impact of being versatile on an individual s external job mobility is substantial and similar in magnitude as the effect of a college degree on a high school dropout s external mobility. |
| JEL: | J62 J24 I24 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112821&r=edu |
| By: | Hamermesh, Daniel S. (Royal Holloway; University of Texas at Austin) |
| Abstract: | I describe and compare sources of data on citations in economics and the statistics that can be constructed from them. Constructing data sets of the post-publication citation histories of articles published in the "Top 5" journals in the 1970s and the 2000s, I examine distributions and life cycles of citations, compare citation histories of articles in different sub-specialties in economics and present evidence on the history and heterogeneity of those journals' impacts and the marginal citation productivity of additional coauthors. I use a new data set of the lifetime citation histories of over 1000 economists from 30 universities to rank economics departments by various measures and to demonstrate the importance of intra- and interdepartmental heterogeneity in productivity. Throughout, the discussion summarizes earlier work. I survey research on the impacts of citations on salaries and non-monetary rewards and discuss how citations reflect judgments about research quality in economics. |
| Keywords: | academic productivity, tournaments, publication, rankings |
| JEL: | A11 J01 B31 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9593&r=edu |
| By: | Diette, Timothy M. (Washington and Lee University); Uwaifo Oyelere, Ruth |
| Abstract: | There is a perception among native born parents in the U.S. that the increasing number of immigrant students in schools creates negative peer effects on their children. In North Carolina there has been a significant increase in immigrants especially those with limited English language skills and recent data suggest that North Carolina has the 8th largest ELL student population with over 60 percent of immigrants coming from Latin America and the Caribbean. While past research suggests negative though negligible peer effects of Limited English (LE) students on achievement of other students, potential peer effects of student from Latin America in general has not been considered. In this paper we attempt to identify both LE student and Latin American (LA) student peer effects separately utilizing fixed effects methods that allow us to deal with the potential selectivity across time and schools. On average we find no evidence of negative peer effects of LE students on females and white students but note small negative effects on average on males and black students. We also find that, holding constant other factors, an increase in the share of LA students share does not create negative peer effects on native students' achievement. Rather, it is the limited English language skills of some of these students that leads to small, negative peer effects on natives. |
| Keywords: | immigrants, student achievement, peer effects, education, race, gender, Limited English students, Latino peer effects, Hispanic peer effects |
| JEL: | I20 I21 J15 J24 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9661&r=edu |
| By: | Baert, Stijn (Ghent University); Heiland, Frank (Baruch College, City University of New York); Korenman, Sanders (Baruch College, City University of New York) |
| Abstract: | We study how native-immigrant (second generation) differences in educational trajectories and school-to-work transitions vary by gender. Using longitudinal Belgian data and adjusting for family background and educational sorting, we find that both male and female second-generation immigrants, especially Turks and Moroccans, lag natives in finishing secondary education and beginning tertiary education when schooling delay is taken into account, though the female gap is larger. The same is true for residual gaps in the transition to work: native males are 30% more likely than comparable Turkish males to be employed three months after leaving school, while the corresponding female gap is 60%. In addition, we study demographic behaviors (fertility, marriage and cohabitation) related to hypotheses that attribute educational and economic gaps to cultural differences between immigrants and natives. |
| Keywords: | educational attainment, school-to-work transitions, dynamic selection bias, ethnic minorities, gender differentials, economic sociology |
| JEL: | I24 J15 J16 J70 Z10 C35 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8752&r=edu |
| By: | Burkhauser, Richard V. (Cornell University); De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel (University of Oxford); Powdthavee, Nattavudh (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The share of income held by the top 1 percent in many countries around the world has been rising persistently over the last 30 years. But we continue to know little about how the rising top income shares affect human well-being. This study combines the latest data to examine the relationship between top income share and different dimensions of subjective well-being. We find top income shares to be significantly correlated with lower life evaluation and higher levels of negative emotional well-being, but not positive emotional well-being. The results are robust to household income, individual's socio-economic status, and macroeconomic environment controls. |
| Keywords: | top income, life evaluation, well-being, income inequality, World Top Income Database, Gallup World Poll |
| JEL: | D63 I3 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9677&r=edu |
| By: | Rickman, Dan S. (Oklahoma State University); Wang, Hongbo (Oklahoma State University); Winters, John V. (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Using the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and a novel method for measuring changes in educational attainment we examine the link between educational attainment and shale oil and gas extraction for the states of Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia. The three states examined are economically-small, relatively more rural, and have high levels of shale oil and gas reserves. They also are varied in that West Virginia is intensive in shale gas extraction, while the other two are intensive in shale oil extraction. We find significant reductions in high school and college attainment among all three states' initial residents because of the shale booms. |
| Keywords: | shale development, synthetic control method, educational attainment |
| JEL: | Q4 R1 R2 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9647&r=edu |
| By: | Böhm, Sebastian; Grossmann, Volker; Steger, Thomas |
| Abstract: | The paper revisits the debate on trickle-down growth in view of the widely discussed evolution of the earnings and income distribution that followed a massive expansion of higher education. We propose a dynamic general equilibrium model to dynamically evaluate whether economic growth triggered by an increase in public education expenditure on behalf of those with high learning ability eventually trickles down to low-ability workers and serves them better than redistributive transfers. Our results suggest that, in the shorter run, low-skilled workers lose. They are better off from promoting equally sized redistributive transfers. In the longer run, however, low-skilled workers eventually benefit more from the education policy. Interestingly, although the expansion of education leads to sustained increases in the skill premium, income inequality follows an inverted U-shaped evolution. |
| JEL: | H20 J31 O30 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113220&r=edu |
| By: | Hoffmann, Malte; Dr. Boll, Christina |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we use GSOEP data to explore whether parents employment has an extra effect on the school achievement of their children, beyond the well-established effects of education, income and demography. First, we test whether the source of income or parents unemployment determine children s school achievements. Second, we analyze the effect of job prestige and factors of societal engagement on children s performance. Our results indicate no clear income associations but the existence of an employment channel as well as a social channel from mothers to their kids. A negative role model for girls is found for maternal housework. Moreover, the fathers job prestige is substantial. |
| JEL: | D13 J62 J22 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112933&r=edu |
| By: | Höckel, Lisa Sofie (RWI); Santos Silva, Manuel (University of Göttingen); Stöhr, Tobias (Kiel Institute for the World Economy) |
| Abstract: | Educational outcomes of children are highly dependent on household and school-level inputs. In poor countries remittances from migrants can provide additional funds for the education of the left behind. At the same time the absence of migrant parents can affect families' time allocation towards education. Previous work on education inputs often implicitly assumed that preferences for different kinds of education inputs remain unchanged when household members migrate. Using survey data and matched administrative school-level public expenditures from the World Bank's Open Budget Initiative (BOOST) from Moldova, one of the countries with the highest emigration rates in the world, and an instrumental variable approach we find that the strongest migration-related response in private education expenditure are substantially lower informal payments to public school teachers. This fact is at odds with a positive income effect due to migration. In addition we find that migration slightly increases caregivers' time spent on their children's education. We argue that our results are likely to be driven by changing preferences towards educational inputs induced by migration. |
| Keywords: | migration, emigration, corruption, education spending, social remittances, children left behind |
| JEL: | F22 I22 H52 D13 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9687&r=edu |
| By: | Reinhold, Mario; Thomsen, Stephan |
| Abstract: | Recent evidence for the US labour market indicates that despite supply of higher skilled job market entrants rose, there was a (permanent) decline in demand for those qualifications in the aftermath of the Tech Bust in 2000. Since Germany experienced also an increase in high-skilled labour supply, and both economies depend on similar factors, we analyse the corresponding situation of the demand-supply relation. Based on data of the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (GSOEP) for the years 1984 to 2012, we present long-run wage and occupational trends of the increasing number of labour market entrants with higher education. The results indicate that job entrants with a university (postgraduate) degree have faced steadily high occupational shares in the cognitive sector accompanied with high and increasing wages. Job market entrants from college or universities of applied sciences, however, experienced a decline in employment shares in the cognitive sector associated with declining wages. The provided evidence shows that occupational success of university graduates is heterogenous with distinct and different patterns for the high and highest educated. |
| JEL: | J21 J23 O33 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113018&r=edu |
| By: | Bannier, Christina E.; Neubert, Milena |
| Abstract: | This study examines the role of actual and perceived financial sophistication (i.e., financial literacy and confidence) for individuals' wealth accumulation. Using survey data from the German SAVE initiative, we find strong gender- and education-related differences in the distribution of the two variables and their effects on wealth: As financial literacy rises in formal education, whereas confidence increases in education for men but decreases for women, we observe that women become strongly underconfident with higher education, while men remain overconfident. Regarding wealth accumulation, we show that financial literacy has a positive effect that is stronger for women than for men and that is increasing (decreasing) in education for women (men). Confidence, however, supports only highly-educated men's wealth. When considering different channels for wealth accumulation, we observe that financial literacy is more important for current financial market participation, whereas confidence is more strongly associated with future-oriented financial planning. Overall, we demonstrate that highly-educated men's wealth levels benefit from their overconfidence via all financial decisions considered, but highly-educated women's financial planning suffers from their underconfidence. This may impair their wealth levels in old age. |
| Keywords: | financial literacy,financial sophistication,confidence,wealth,household finance,behavioral finance,gender,formal education |
| JEL: | D91 G11 D83 J26 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cfswop:528&r=edu |
| By: | Kamhöfer, Daniel A.; Cattan, Sarah; Karlsson, Martin; Nilsson, Therese |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the effect of missed instruction time in school on short-term educational performance as well as long-term retirement income and mortality. Using self-gathered Swedish register data, we are able to distinguish total days of absence within a school year and missed instructional time due to sickness. Using various fixed effects strategies and an instrumental variables approach we find that individual absence leads on average to a decrease of 4.4% of standard deviation in educational performance per school year. Our results suggest that the negative effect of sickness is mainly driven by missed instructional time. The sign of the long-run consequences of absence are in line with economic theory but the effect size is rather small. |
| JEL: | C23 I14 I21 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113180&r=edu |
| By: | Buscha, Franz (University of Westminster); Dickson, Matt (University of Bath) |
| Abstract: | This paper re-examines the wage returns to the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age (RoSLA) in England and Wales using a high-quality administrative panel dataset covering the relevant cohorts for almost 40 years of their labour market careers. With best practice regression discontinuity methods we find at best a zero return to the additional education for men. However, we contend that regression discontinuity methods in this context will give unreliable estimates of the return. Using the panel data to correct for this we find a local average treatment effect of 7% over the lifetime for this additional year of education. |
| Keywords: | returns to education, life-cycle, earnings, experience |
| JEL: | I28 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9596&r=edu |
| By: | Santiago Pereda Fernández (Banca d’Italia) |
| Abstract: | I propose a method to correct for test scores manipulation and apply it to a natural experiment in the Italian education system consisting in the random assignment of external monitors to classrooms. The empirical strategy is based on a likelihood approach, using nonlinear panel data methods to obtain clean estimates of cheating controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. The likelihood of each classroom's scores is later used to correct them for cheating. Cheating is not associated with an increase in the correlation of the answers after we control for mean test scores. The method produces estimates of manipulation more frequent in the South and Islands and among female students and immigrants in Italian tests. A simulation shows how the manipulation reduces the accuracy of an exam in reflecting students' knowledge, and the correction proposed in this paper makes up for about a half of this loss. |
| Keywords: | cheating correction, copula, nonlinear panel data, test scores manipulation |
| JEL: | C23 C25 I28 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1047_16&r=edu |
| By: | Amin, Vikesh (Central Michigan University); Flores, Carlos A. (California Polytechnic State University); Flores-Lagunes, Alfonso (Syracuse University); Parisian, Daniel J. (Mississippi State University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior using random assignment into Job Corps (JC) – the United States' largest education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth – as a source of exogenous variability in educational attainment. We allow such random assignment to violate the exclusion restriction when used as an instrument by employing nonparametric bounds. The attainment of a degree is estimated to reduce arrest rates by at most 11.8 percentage points (about 32.6%). We also find suggestive evidence that the effects may be larger for males relative to females, and larger for black males relative to white males. Remarkably, our 95 percent confidence intervals on the causal effect of education on arrests are very similar to the corresponding confidence intervals on the same effect from studies exploiting changes in compulsory schooling laws as an instrumental variable in the estimation of the effect of education on arrest rates (e.g., Lochner and Moretti, 2004). |
| Keywords: | degree attainment, arrests, crime, social experiments |
| JEL: | I2 K42 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9695&r=edu |
| By: | Kraehnert, Kati; Groppo, Valeria |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of extreme weather shocks on education outcomes in Mongolia. Our focus is on particularly harsh winters that caused mass livestock mortality (called dzud in Mongolian) between 1999 and 2002 and in 2009/2010. The timing of events allows us to analyze both short- and long-term effects of weather shocks on education. Our analysis disentangles the effects by age of exposure. Moreover, we provide new evidence on which households socio-economic characteristics and coping strategies are associated with worse or milder impacts of the shock. The data basis is an unusually detailed household survey that comprises rich information on households shock experience and retrospective information on households pre-shock socio-economic status. Various measures of shock intensity are derived from data on snow depth and livestock mortality. We mainly employ a difference-in-differences econometric approach, which allows to draw causal inference by exploiting exogenous variation in shock exposure across space and age cohorts. Results show that weather shocks negatively affect education both in the short- and in the long-term. Individuals from herding households with poorer socio-economic backgrounds appear to be particularly affected. Individuals exposed during pre-schooling age bear persistent negative human capital effects. |
| JEL: | I25 Q54 O12 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113161&r=edu |
| By: | Lindahl, Mikael (University of Gothenburg); Lundberg, Evelina (Uppsala University); Palme, Mårten (Stockholm University); Simeonova, Emilia (Johns Hopkins University) |
| Abstract: | To what extent is the length of our lives determined by pre-birth factors? And to what extent is it affected by parental resources during our upbringing that can be influenced by public policy? We study the formation of adult health and mortality using data on about 21,000 adoptees born between 1940 and 1967. The data include detailed information on both biological and adopting parents. We find that the health of the biological parents affects the health of their adopted children. Thus, we confirm that genes and conditions in utero are important intergenerational transmission channels for long-term health. However, we also find strong evidence that the educational attainment of the adopting mother has a significant impact on the health of her adoptive children, suggesting that family environment and resources in the post-birth years have long-term consequences for children's health. |
| Keywords: | health inequality, mortality, pre- versus post-birth decomposition |
| JEL: | I10 I14 I24 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9688&r=edu |
| By: | Triebs, Thomas; Morgan, John; Tumlinson, Justin |
| Abstract: | Educational tracking seeks to group students by unobserved ability using measures of observable acquired skills. In a model where individuals have differential skills prior to beginning formal education due to differences in early childhood development (e.g. linguistic, cultural, or nutritional disadvantages), we show that color-blind tracking systematically underplaces minorities. As a result, minorities have, in expectation, higher abilities than non-minorities assigned to the same track regardless of track. A counterintuitive empirical implication of the model is that, conditional on tracking score and track, minorities will outperform non-minorities in subsequent testing following tracking. Affirmative action policies seeking to equalize posttracking outcomes share similar flaws to color-blind standards in that the average ability of minorities assigned to the upper track remains higher than for non-minorities. |
| JEL: | I24 J18 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113106&r=edu |
| By: | Lindahl, Mikael (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Lundberg, Evelina (Uppsala University); Palme, Mårten (Stockholm University); Simeonova, Emilia (Johns Hopkins University) |
| Abstract: | To what extent is the length of our lives determined by pre-birth factors? And to what extent is it affected by parental resources during our upbringing that can be influenced by public policy? We study the formation of adult health and mortality using data on about 21,000 adoptees born between 1940 and 1967. The data include detailed information on both biological and adopting parents. We find that the health of the biological parents affects the health of their adopted children. Thus, we confirm that genes and conditions in utero are important intergenerational transmission channels for long-term health. However, we also find strong evidence that the educational attainment of the adopting mother has a significant impact on the health of her adoptive children, suggesting that family environment and resources in the post-birth years have long-term consequences for children’s health. |
| Keywords: | Health inequality; mortality; Pre- versus post-birth decomposition |
| JEL: | I10 I14 I24 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0644&r=edu |
| By: | Werner, Katharina; Prettner, Klaus |
| Abstract: | We analyze the short- and long-run effects of public education on economic growth and welfare. In so doing, we extend an R&D-based economic growth model by including a governmental sector that levies labor income taxes and uses the proceeds to finance teachers. An increase in the tax rate reduces consumption possibilities (and thereby individual utility), and the number of workers available for final goods production and research. At the same time, however, it increases the educational resources available per pupil. Consequently, economic growth slows down immediately after an increase in educational investments but it speeds up during the transition toward the long-run balanced growth path. Altogether, this implies a dynamic tradeoff in the sense that current cohorts loose due to educational reform, whereas future cohorts gain. We show that there exists an interior welfare-maximizing level of the provision of public education for each time horizon and show that it is higher than the levels we typically observe in industrialized countries. Since the transitional effects of an education reform on growth and welfare can be negative, our framework has the potential to explain resistance against long-run welfare improving education reforms. |
| JEL: | I25 J24 O31 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112997&r=edu |
| By: | Marcotte, Dave E. (American University) |
| Abstract: | Poor air quality has been shown to harm the health and development of children. Research on these relationships has focused almost exclusively on the effects of human-made pollutants, and has not fully distinguished between contemporaneous and long-run effects. This paper contributes on both of these fronts. Merging data on plant pollen, human-made pollutants and ECLS-K data on academic skills, I study the relationship between poor air quality in the first years of life on school-readiness, and the effects of ambient air quality on achievement of young children. I find evidence that exposure in early childhood affects school readiness at the start of kindergarten, and that the effects of air quality on the growth of cognitive skills in math and reading continue into elementary school. |
| Keywords: | pollution, education, cognitive skills |
| JEL: | I1 I2 Q53 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9689&r=edu |
| By: | Hernæs, Øystein (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Markussen, Simen (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Røed, Knut (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We exploit supply-driven heterogeneity in the expansion of cable television across Norwegian municipalities to identify developmental effects of commercial television exposure during childhood. We find that higher exposure to commercial television reduces cognitive ability and high school graduation rates for young men. The effects are largest for exposure during pre-school and elementary school age. We find no effect on high school completion for women, suggesting availability of non-educational media content as a factor in the widening educational gender gap. Based on time-use data, we show that a possible explanation is that television-watching crowds out reading more for boys than girls. |
| Keywords: | human capital, media, education gender gap |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J24 L82 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9645&r=edu |
| By: | Steinmayr, Andreas; Fricke, Hans; Grogger, Jeff |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how exposure to an academic field influences students major choices. In particular, we analyze whether students who are inclined to study business change their intentions after being exposed to economics or law. We exploit a natural experiment at a Swiss university. All first year students face the same curriculum before they chose a major. An important part of the curriculum is a first year paper in business, economics, or law. Due to oversubscription of business, the university assigns the field of the paper in a standardized way unrelated to student characteristics. We find that assignment to economics raises the probability of majoring in economics by 2.7 percentage points, which amounts to 18 percent of the share of students who major in economics. The effect is entirely driven by male students. |
| JEL: | I20 I23 A22 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113158&r=edu |