n.a.
In every society for which we have data, people's educational achievement is positively correlated with their parents' education or with other indicators of their parents' socio-economic status. This topic is central in social science, and there is no doubt that research has intensified during recent decades, not least thanks to better data having become accessible to researchers. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize and evaluate recent empirical research on education and family background. Broadly speaking, we focus on two related but distinct motivations for this topic. The first is equality of opportunity. Here, the major research issues are: How important a determinant of educational attainment is family background, and is family background—in the broad sense that incorporates factors not chosen by the individual—a major, or only a minor, determinant of educational attainment? What are the mechanisms that make family background important? Have specific policy reforms been successful in reducing the impact of family background on educational achievement? The second common starting point for recent research has been the child development perspective. Here, the focus is on how human-capital accumulation is affected by early childhood resources. Studies with this focus address the questions: What types of parental resources or inputs are important for children's development, why are they important, and when are they important? In addition, this literature focuses on exploring which types of economic policy, and what timing of the policy in relation to children's social and cognitive development, are conducive to children's performance and adult outcomes. The policy interest in this research is whether policies that change parents' resources and restrictions have causal effects on their children.
In this Chapter, we critically review the sizable literature that values school quality and performance through housing valuations. While highly variable in terms of research quality, the literature consistently finds housing valuations to be significantly higher in places where measured school quality is higher. Thus parents are prepared to pay substantial amounts of money to get their children educated in better performing schools. This conclusion emerges from studies across many countries, using a variety of identification strategies, and at different levels of the education system.
The Equality of Educational Opportunity Study (EEOS), also known as the "Coleman Study," was commissioned by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1964 to assess the availability of equal educational opportunities to children of different race, color, religion, and national origin. This study was conducted in response to provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and serves as an example of the use of a social survey as an instrument of national policy-making. The EEOS consists of test scores and questionnaire responses obtained from first-, third-, sixth-, ninth-, and twelfth-grade students, and questionnaire responses from teachers and principals. These data were obtained from a national sample of schools in the United States. Data on students include age, gender, race and ethnic identity, socioeconomic background, attitudes toward learning, education and career goals, and racial attitudes. Scores on teacher-administered standardized academic tests are also included. These scores reflect performance on tests assessing ability and achievement in verbal skills, nonverbal associations, reading comprehension, and mathematics. Data on teachers and principals include academic discipline, assessment of verbal facility, salary, education and teaching experience, and attitudes toward race.
An empirical investigation of trade-offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children's achievement. Though parents show no favoritism to first-born children, being early in the birth order implies a distinct advantage, entirely because of the higher probability of being in a small family. Recent large changes in family size explain a portion of aggregate test score declines, but increased divorce rates and market work by mothers have no apparent impact. Finally, teachers are shown to differ enormously, even though performance differences are poorly captured by commonly measured teacher characteristics.
Empirical analysis of peer effects on student achievement has been open to question because of the difficulties of separating peer effects from other confounding influences. While most econometric attention has been directed at issues of simultaneous determination of peer interactions, we argue that issues of omitted and mismeasured variables are likely to be more important. We control for the most important determinants of achievement that will confound peer estimates by removing student and school-by-grade fixed effects in addition to observable family and school characteristics. The analysis also addresses the reciprocal nature of peer interactions and the interpretation of estimates based upon models using past achievement as the measure of peer group quality. The results indicate that peer achievement has a positive effect on achievement growth. Moreover, students throughout the school test score distribution appear to benefit from higher achieving schoolmates. On the other hand, the variance in achievement appears to have no systematic effect.
Economists have long been ambivalent about whether the discipline should focus on the analysis of markets or should be concerned with social interactions more generally. Recently the discipline has sought to broaden its scope while maintaining the rigor of modern economic analysis. Major theoretical developments in game theory, the economics of the family, and endogenous growth theory have taken place. Economists have also performed new empirical research on social interactions, but the empirical literature does not show progress comparable to that achieved in economic theory. This paper examines why and discusses how economists might make sustained contributions to the empirical analysis of social interactions.
This paper reviews empirical evidence, especially from Europe, on how education and training policies can be designed to advance both efficiency and equity. Returns to educational investments tend to decrease over the life cycle. Moreover, they are the highest for disadvantaged children at early stages and for the well-off at late stages of the life cycle. This creates complementarities between efficiency and equity at early stages and trade-offs at late stages. The paper discusses specific policies for efficiency and equity at each educational stage, ranging from early childhood education and schools over vocational and higher education to training and lifelong learning. The available evidence suggests that both efficiency and equity can be enhanced by output-oriented reforms properly designed to each stage, where the state generally sets a regulatory framework that ensures accountability and funding, and uses the forces of choice and competition to deliver best results. Designed this way, education and training systems can advance efficiency and equity at the same time.
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