Educational opportunities determine the intergenerational mobility of human capital and are affected by institutional features of schooling systems. The aim of this paper is twofold. It intends to show how strongly student performance depends on student background at two important stages in a student's life as well as to explain cross-country differences in educational opportunities by schooling institutions. A difference-in-differences estimation approach is applied to control for country-specific effects. The results imply that educational opportunities decrease with student age in most countries. However, the attitude of parents seems to become more important while the impact of social origin decreases. A greater differentiation of the schooling system as indicated by streaming and private schools is associated with a greater effect of social background while more instruction time limits the impact of social origin on student performance. Higher school autonomy increases the impact of parental influence.
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In the 1990s, Swedish education policy took several steps towards more decentralization and more room for parental school choice. The decade was also a turbulent one in other respects, with high unemployment and major cuts in school budgets. We study the relationship between pupils’ school performance and their family background during this period of time. We use large register-based data sets and employ the grade average at age 16 as our measure of school performance. We also use register-based information to construct two alternative measures of family background. The first measure – the grade correlation between siblings born within three years of time – is a broad one and captures family as well as community factors shared by siblings. The second one – the association between grades and parental earnings – is a more narrow one. Surprisingly, we find that both relationships were remarkably stable over this turbulent period of time.
We study whether the combined significant reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio and increase in parental education observed in Italy between the end of World War II and the end of the 1980s have had a significant impact on the educational attainment and the labor market returns of a representative sample of Italians born between 1941 and 1970. We find that the lower pupil-teacher ratio is positively correlated with higher educational attainment, but that the overall improvement of parental education has had an even stronger impact on attainment. We also find that the positive impact of better school quality on educational attainment and returns to education has been particularly significant for the individuals born in regions and cohorts with poorer family background. Parental education has had asymmetric effects, positive on attainment and negative on school returns. Better school quality has also had asymmetric effects on the returns to education, positive for individuals with poor family background and negative for individuals born in regions and cohorts with relatively high parental education. Our evidence suggests that better school quality, measured by a lower pupil-teacher ratio, is a technical substitute to parental education in the production of individual human capital. When school quality and family background are substitutes, an increase of public resources invested in education can be used to reduce the differences induced by parental education.
The way parents take influence on the education of their children is a crucial aspect of intergenerational mobility. Unlike in the UK or in the US, in Germany an important decision about which educational track to follow is made at a relatively early stage: after primary school, at the age of ten. In this paper, we use micro data to analyse the association between parents' education and profession, and secondary track school choice and subsequent career prospects of the child. Our analysis covers the last six decades. We demonstrate that parental background is strongly related to the secondary track choice of the child, and subsequent educational achievements. We find a slight convergence for individuals from different parental background over the last decades. We also find a positive trend for females to follow higher secondary school tracks, keeping parental background constant. The association between parental class and educational choice translates into substantial earnings differentials later in life.
In Sweden, children typically start compulsory school the year they turn seven. Hence, individuals born just before or just after the new year, have about the same date of birth but start school at different ages. We exploit this source of exogenous variation, to identify the effects of age at school entry on test scores, grades, educational attainment and labor market performance. Using a rich data set for the entire Swedish population born 1935-84, we find that children who start school at an older age do better than their younger peers and go on to have more education. Children from families with weaker educational tradition have more to win from starting school later. The long-run earnings effects are positive but small. Exploiting within school variation in peer group age composition, we find that the school starting age effect primarily is due to absolute maturity rather than to the relative age in the class.
Peer effects are potentially important for understanding the optimal organization of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, but finding evidence is difficult because people are selected into peer groups based, in part, on their unobservable characteristics. I identify the effects of peers whom a child encounters in the classroom using sources of variation that are credibly idiosyncratic, such as changes in the gender and racial composition of a grade in a school in adjacent years. I use specification tests, including one based on randomizing the order of years, to confirm that the variation I use is not generated by time trends or other non-idiosyncratic forces. I find that students are affected by the achievement level of their peers: a credibly exogenous change of 1 point in peers' reading scores raises a student's own score between 0.15 and 0.4 points, depending on the specification. Although I find little evidence that peer effects are generally non-linear, I do find that peer effects are stronger intra-race and that some effects do not operate through peers' achievement. For instance, both males and females perform better in math in classrooms that are more female despite the fact that females' math performance is about the same as that of males.
In this paper, we consider research on links between higher education and family background, focusing particularly on the experiences of two cohorts of individuals born in 1958 and 1970. The findings point to a rise in educational inequality during the period relevant to these two cohorts. Specifically, links between educational achievement and parental income / social class strengthened during this period. Furthermore, a person’s actual (measured) ability became a poorer predictor of whether they would get a degree than was previously the case. The expansion of higher education in the UK during this period appears to have disproportionately benefited children from richer families rather than the most able. Furthermore, the labour market success or failure of individuals became more closely connected to their parents’ income, revealing a fall in the extent of intergenerational mobility over time.
In this paper we evaluate the impact of a major school reform, that took place in the 1950s in Sweden, on educational attainment and earnings. The reform, which has many common elements with reforms in other European countries including the UK, consisted of increasing compulsory schooling, imposing a national curriculum and abolishing selection by ability into Academic and non-academic streams at the age of 12 (comprehensive school reform). Our data combines survey data with administrative sources. We find that the reform increased both the educational attainment and the earnings of children whose fathers had just compulsory education. However the earnings of those with educated parents declined - possibly because of a dilution of quality at the top end of the education levels. The overall effect of the reform was however positive.
In a recent paper in this Review Jere R. Behrman and Mark R. Rosenzweig (2002) present empirical evidence that contradicts the conventional wisdom that maternal schooling has a bigger effect on the child’s schooling than that of her husband. They consider the impact of parental schooling on child schooling in the presence of unmeasured ability and assortative mating. Using twin data, they come to the surprising conclusion that the mother’s schooling has little if any impact on the schooling of her child, holding everything else (including unobserved ability factors of either mother or father) constant. Their findings — I reason — must be bolstered with further support. This paper considers the effects of unobserved inherited abilities on the child’s schooling, but, instead of twinning, obtains identification from adopted children. If adopted children share only their parents’ environment and not their parents’ genes, any relation between the schooling of adoptees and their adoptive parents is driven by the influence parents have on their children’s environment, and not by parents passing on their genes. Controlling for inherited abilities and assortative mating I find that the association between mother’s (but not father’s) and child schooling disappears. These findings are consistent with the twin results of Behrman and Rosenzweig (2002).
When parents are more educated, their children tend to receive more schooling as well. Does this occur because parental ability is passed on genetically or because more educated parents provide a better environment for children to flourish? Using an intergenerational sample of families, we estimate on the basis of a comparison of biological and adopted children that about 5560 percent of the parental ability is genetically transmitted.
This paper uses a unique data set to measure peer effects among college roommates. Freshman year roommates and dormmates are randomly assigned at Dartmouth College. I find that peers have an impact on grade point average and on decisions to join social groups such as fraternities. Residential peer effects are markedly absent in other major life decisions such as choice of college major. Peer effects in GPA occur at the individual room level, whereas peer effects in fraternity membership occur both at the room level and the entire dorm level. Overall, the data provide strong evidence for the existence of peer effects in student outcomes.
This paper uses data on adopted children to examine the relative importance of biology and environment in determining educational and labor market outcomes. I employ three long-term panel data sets which contain information on adopted children, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. In at least two of the three data sets, the mechanism for assigning children to adoptive parents is fairly random and does not match children to adoptive parents based on health, race, or ability. I find that adoptive parents' education and income have a modest impact on child test scores but a large impact on college attendance, marital status, and earnings. In contrast with existing work on IQ scores, I do not find that the influence of adoptive parents declines with child age.
We first provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity for 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two TIMSS international student achievement studies. Then, we suggest a theoretical model on how different organizational features of the school system affect the extent to which equality of educational opportunity is achieved. The predictions are that late tracking and a long pre-primary cycle are beneficial for equality of opportunity, while pre-school enrollment has a detrimental influence at low levels of enrollment and a beneficial influence at higher levels. Finally, using cross-country variations in education policies and their interaction with family background at the individual student level, we provide empirical evidence supportive of the predictions of our model. Additionally, we test the effects of other systemic features, finding that equality is negatively related to private school financing, but positively to private provision. On the other hand, equality is not significantly related to aggregate spending, the length of the school day and economic development. Evidence on the relationship between equality of opportunity and the country's mean test score is mixed.
The paper explores the strict school enrolment rules to estimate the effect of age at school entry on school achievement for 15-16 year old students in Norway using achievement tests in reading from OECD-PISA. Since enrolment date is common and compulsory for all students born in a particular calendar year, it is possible to identify the pure effect of enrolment age holding the length of schooling constant. The results indicate that the youngest children (born in December) face a significant disadvantage in reading compared to their older classmates. These results suggest that more flexible enrolment rules should be considered to equalize the opportunities of the children.
The strong correlation between parents' economic status and that of their children has been well-documented, but little is known about the extent to which this is a causal phenomenon. This paper attempts to improve our understanding of the causal processes that contribute to intergenerational immobility by exploiting historical changes in compulsory schooling laws that affected the educational attainment of parents without affecting their innate abilities or endowments. We examine the influence of parental compulsory schooling on grade retention status for children aged 7 to 15 using the 1960, 1970 and 1980 U.S. Censuses. Our estimates indicate that a one-year increase in the education of either parent reduces the probability that a child repeats a grade by between two and seven percentage points. Among 15 to 16 year olds living at home, we also estimate that parental compulsory schooling significantly lowers the likelihood of dropping out. These findings suggest that education policies may be able to reduce part of the intergenerational transmission of inequality.
This paper estimates the effects of family-background characteristics on student performance in the US and 17 Western European school systems. Family background has strong effects both in Europe and the United States, remarkably similar in size. France and Flemish Belgium achieve the most equitable performance for students from different family backgrounds, and Britain and Germany the least. Equality of opportunities is unrelated to countries’ mean performance. Quantile regressions show little variation in family-background effects across the ability distribution in most countries.
In this paper we analyse the sibling size and birth-order effect on educational achievement in Switzerland on the basis of PISA data. We find an overall modest size and birth-order effect. The sibling size effect, however, is a product of a substantial and significant negative size effect for families with lower socio-economic status and foreign origin and a positive sibling size effect in small, native families with a high socio-economic status compared to singlechild families with the same background. Thus, subgroups of the population seem to be confronted with binding budget constraints, although education is free. The hypothesis that parents of larger families spend on average less time with their children is also tested and shows the expected negative effect of the sibling size. We present an extended version of the sibling size model that can account for these effects and discuss the consequences these results might have for social and educational policy.
I use data from Williams College to implement a quasi-experimental empirical strategy aimed at measuring peer effects in academic outcomes. In particular, I use data on individual students' grades, their SAT scores, and the SAT scores of their roommates. I argue that first-year roommates are assigned randomly with respect to academic ability. This allows me to measure differences in grades of high-, medium-, or low-SAT students living with high-, medium-, or low-SAT roommates. With random assignment these estimates would provide compelling estimates of the effect of roommates' academic characteristics on an individual's grades. I also consider the effect of peers at somewhat more aggregated levels. In particular, I consider the effects associated with different academic environments in clusters of rooms that define distinct social units. The results suggest that peer effects are almost always linked more strongly with verbal SAT scores than with math SAT scores. Students in the middle of the SAT distribution may have somewhat worse grades if they share a room with a student who is in the bottom 15% of the verbal SAT distribution. The effects are not large, but are statistically significant in many models.
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