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on Education |
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Issue of 2017‒06‒18
eleven papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Ilaria De Angelis (Bank of Italy); Vincenzo Mariani (Bank of Italy); Roberto Torrini (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | A relatively low geographical mobility of students in the Centre and North of the country and a large incidence of movers from southern regions to universities located in the Centre and North are well-established features of the Italian academic system. Exploiting a novel administrative dataset on academic enrolments, this paper shows that the interregional mobility of Italian students has increased in recent years. We highlight that the increase in mobility, which has occurred in a period of declining entry rates, is not attributable to a change in the composition of the enrolling students. We investigate some of the main drivers of student mobility by relating regional flows to the attractiveness of universities and show that mobility is positively associated with the quality of research and teaching and with the job prospects offered by the hosting university. Student flows are instead negatively correlated with the distance between the university and the region of origin and with drop-out rates. The empirical evidence also suggests that in recent years the distance from the university of destination has become less relevant in explaining mobility, whereas the role played by university quality has increased. |
| Keywords: | university, student mobility, quality of research, labour market JEL Classification: I20, I23 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_380_17&r=edu |
| By: | Kaiser, Tim (DIW Berlin and University of Kiel); Menkhoff, Lukas (DIW Berlin and Humboldt University Berlin) |
| Abstract: | In a meta-analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies, we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and, to an even larger extent, financial literacy. These results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments (RCTs). However, intervention impacts are highly heterogeneous: Financial education is less effective for low-income clients as well as in low and lower-middle income economies. Specific behaviors, such as the handling of debt, are more difficult to influence and mandatory financial education tentatively appears to be less effective. Thus, intervention success depends crucially on increasing education intensity and offering financial education at a \'teachable moment\'. |
| Keywords: | financial education; financial literacy; financial behavior; meta-analysis; meta-regression; impact evaluation; |
| JEL: | D14 I21 |
| Date: | 2017–06–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:37&r=edu |
| By: | Bahadir Dursun; Resul Cesur; Inas Rashad Kelly |
| Abstract: | While several studies estimate the impact of maternal education on birth weight and child mortality using quasi-experimental identification strategies in developing countries, the state of the literature on the causal relationship between maternal education and child health is far from being complete: (i) the extant literature offers conflicting findings; (ii) the local average treatment effects of maternal education, induced by different types of natural experiments, on child health are not well-distinguished; and (iii) many of the existing articles are undermined by limited statistical power due to small sample sizes and/or a weak first stage. To fill the void in the literature, we examine the impact of mother’s extended primary schooling on birth outcomes and child mortality using two large data sets from the Republic of Turkey. We use the 1997 education reform, which extended the duration of mandatory schooling from 5 to 8 years, to address the endogeneity of maternal education to children’s outcomes. A unique feature of the schooling reform of 1997 is that, in a developing country, it arguably provides one of the most suitable empirical frameworks to identify the local average treatment effect of compulsory education among women with a low tendency to extend their schooling beyond five years of elementary school. Results show that an increase in mother’s schooling improves child health at birth (such as through a reduction in the likelihood of low birth weight and premature births) and lowers child mortality. Moreover, it improves outcomes pertaining to method of birth delivery and maternal smoking. These findings survive a number of sensitivity tests. The current study provides robust evidence in favor of the argument that increasing the duration of mandatory primary education among women who have a low interest in receiving more schooling may have substantial non-pecuniary benefits in terms of the health of the offspring in developing countries. |
| JEL: | I12 I21 I26 J13 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23492&r=edu |
| By: | Nicholas W. Papageorge (Johns Hopkins University); Kevin Thom (New York University) |
| Abstract: | Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically disadvantaged households are less likely to go to college when compared to individuals with the same genetic score, but from higher socioeconomic status households. Our findings provide support for the idea that childhood socioeconomic status is an important moderator of the economic returns to genetic endowments. Moreover, the finding that childhood poverty limits the educational attainment of high-ability individuals suggests the existence of unrealized human potential. |
| Keywords: | Human capital, inequality, education, genes |
| JEL: | I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:17-273&r=edu |
| By: | Emanuela Ghignoni |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with the role that an extensive use of informal networks to match workers to jobs can play in the university enrolments decisions of low socioeconomic status students in Italy. By applying estimation techniques with instrumental variables to ISTAT microdata, I found that upper-secondary students coming from lower social classes are less likely to participate in higher education when they live in provinces where the percentage of newly tertiary graduates who found a job thanks to the help of relatives, family connections or friends is higher. My results are consistent with the hypothesis that the wide diffusion of ‘favouritism’ in local labour markets engenders a sense of ‘economic despair’ among those who are poorly connected, thereby damaging individual human capital accumulation, inequality of access to higher education and local socio-economic development. |
| Keywords: | informal channels, favouritism, enrolments, tertiary education, local labour markets |
| JEL: | I24 J24 R10 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sap:wpaper:wp179&r=edu |
| By: | David Coady; Allan Dizioli |
| Abstract: | This paper presents new results on the relationship between income inequality and education expansion—that is, increasing average years of schooling and reducing inequality of schooling. When dynamic panel estimation techniques are used to address issues of persistence and endogeneity, we find a large, positive, statistically significant and stable relationship between inequality of schooling and income inequality, especially in emerging and developing economies and among older age cohorts. The relationship between income inequality and average years of schooling is positive, consistent with constant or increasing returns to additional years of schooling. While this positive relationship is small and not always statistically significant, we find a statistically significant negative relationship with years of schooling of younger cohorts. Statistical tests indicate that our dynamic estimators are consistent and that our identifying instruments are valid. Policy simulations suggest that education expansion will continue to be inequality reducing. This role will diminish as countries develop, but it could be enhanced through a stronger focus on reducing inequality in the quality of education. |
| Date: | 2017–05–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:17/126&r=edu |
| By: | Barron, Kai; Gamboa, Luis F.; Rodriguez-Lesmes, Paul |
| Abstract: | Epidemics tend to have a debilitating influence on the lives of directly afflicted families. However, the presence of an epidemic can also change the behaviour and outcomes of those not directly affected. This paper makes use of a short, sharp, unexpected epidemic to examine the behavioural response of the general public to a sudden shift in the perceived risk to an individual's health and mortality. Our analysis finds that unafflicted school students change their behaviour substantially, affecting important life outcomes. In particular, we find that close to 4 fewer students, out of a typical class of 47 pupils, sit their school leaving examination for every additional 10 cases of severe Dengue per 10 000 inhabitants in a municipality. We rule out several possible mechanisms, leaving an increase in the salience of the disease's risks as a plausible explanation for our findings. |
| Keywords: | Health,health risks,education,human capital,Dengue,Colombia |
| JEL: | I12 I15 I20 D80 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbeoc:spii2017306&r=edu |
| By: | Clemencia Cosentino; Swetha Sridharan; Clair Null |
| Abstract: | The universal education movement has dramatically increased the number of children attending primary school in Africa and Asia. |
| Keywords: | Secondary Education, Africa, Asia, PSIPSE, MEL Framework |
| JEL: | F Z |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:8e5fa5caf70343dda23852a9b43345db&r=edu |
| By: | Shelly Lundberg (University of California Santa Barbara) |
| Abstract: | The educational attainment of young women now exceeds that of young men in most of the developed world, and women account for about 60% of new four-year college graduates in the United States. Several studies have suggested that the increase in single-parent households may be contributing to the growing gender gap in education, as boys are more vulnerable to the negative effects of father absence and economic disadvantage than girls. Using data on recent cohorts of young men and women from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), I find evidence consistent with other studies that boys are relatively more likely to experience problems in school, including school suspensions, when their father is absent, but also that girls are relatively more likely to experience depression in adolescence, particularly in step-father families. By the time Add Health subjects are young adults, there is no evidence that father absence early in life is more strongly associated with lower rates of college graduation for men, compared to women, in either cross-sectional or family fixed-effect models. |
| Keywords: | education, college graduation, gender, family structure, father absence, school quality |
| JEL: | I20 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-046&r=edu |
| By: | Rucker C. Johnson; C. Kirabo Jackson |
| Abstract: | We explore whether early childhood human-capital investments are complementary to those made later in life. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts who were differentially exposed to policy-induced changes in pre-school (Head Start) spending and school-finance-reform-induced changes in public K12 school spending during childhood, depending on place and year of birth. Difference-in-difference instrumental variables and sibling- difference estimates indicate that, for poor children, increases in Head Start spending and increases in public K12 spending each individually increased educational attainment and earnings, and reduced the likelihood of both poverty and incarceration in adulthood. The benefits of Head Start spending were larger when followed by access to better-funded public K12 schools, and the increases in K12 spending were more efficacious for poor children who were exposed to higher levels of Head Start spending during their preschool years. The findings suggest that early investments in the skills of disadvantaged children that are followed by sustained educational investments over time can effectively break the cycle of poverty. |
| JEL: | I20 I24 I28 J20 J68 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23489&r=edu |
| By: | Ahmed Azumah, Ayisha; Mohammed, Safura; Tetteh, Rebecca |
| Abstract: | The paper examined university staff overall job satisfaction in Sunyani Technical University in a survey of 100 respondents in a cross-sectional study and a quantitative design. Using standard ordinary least square (OLS) method the findings of the study show that employees are satisfied with overall job satisfaction, and satisfied with the elements of satisfaction identified in the survey, with salary and workload been the most satisfied elements. The findings of the research in addition, indicate that elements of job satisfaction influence overall job satisfaction. Management of higher institutions should take into account the findings of the current study in motivating employees for enhance performance resulting from better service and quality service, since university workers are the first members of the community in dealing with students who are junior members of the community. |
| Keywords: | Elements of satisfaction, overall job satisfaction, employee performance |
| JEL: | J24 J28 M52 M54 |
| Date: | 2017–05–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79674&r=edu |