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on Education |
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Issue of 2017‒08‒13
sixteen papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Estrada, Ricardo; Gignoux, Jérémie |
| Abstract: | We exploit data on the future earnings students at high school completion expect to receive with and without a college education, together with information on learning achievement and college outcomes, to study the benefits from admission into a system of elite public high schools in Mexico City. Using data for the centralized allocation of students into schools and an adapted regression discontinuity design strategy, we estimate that elite school admission increases the future earnings and returns students expect from a college education. These gains in earnings expectations seem to reflect improvement in actual earnings opportunities, as admission to this elite school system also enhances learning achievement and college graduation outcomes. This provides evidence of the earnings benefits from attending elite schools. |
| Keywords: | Educación, Investigación socioeconómica, Trabajo y protección social, |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblpap:1017&r=edu |
| By: | Michel beine (CREA, Université du Luxembourg); Marco Delogu (CREA, Université du Luxembourg); Lionel Ragot (Université Paris Nanterre) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the determinants of international students' mobility at the university level, for using specifically on the role of tuition fees. We derive a gravity model from a Random Utility Maximization model of location choice for international students in the presence of capacity constraints of the hosting institutions. The last layer of the model is estimated using new data on student migration flows at the university level for Italy. We control for the potential endogeneity of tuition fees through a classical IV approach based on the status of the university. We obtain evidence for a clear and negative effect of fees on international student mobility and confirm the positive impact of the quality of the education. The estimations also support the important role of additional destination-specific variables such as host capacity, the expected return of education and the cost of living in the vicinity of the university. |
| Keywords: | Foreign students; Tuition fees; Location choice; University Quality |
| JEL: | F22 H52 I23 O15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:luc:wpaper:17-09&r=edu |
| By: | Martins, Luis; Pereira, Manuel C |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a large multi-country database with data from the OECD PISA program to disentangle the effects of birthdate on educational performance. As far as age effects are concerned, we conclude that children are disadvantaged because they are the youngest in class (relative age effect), not because they are young per se. Our findings go against delaying mandatory school entry as a general policy, as there is no gain from a rise in entry age - keeping age differences among students constant - to make up for the shortening of length of schooling. Such an evidence that postponing school entry postpones learning is more marked for children belonging to disadvantaged households. In contrast, the relative age effect does not interact with family background, and remains stable across school entry age cohorts. The size of this effect, measured at the age 15 is not large, but its interaction with early grade retention and tracking may enhance long-term effects. Finally, we do not detect an association between birthdate and achievement originating in unobservable characteristics of students. |
| Keywords: | birthdate and attainment, school entry age |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80607&r=edu |
| By: | Margarida Rodrigues (European Commission - JRC); Federico Biagi (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | The use of digital technologies for learning is high on the policy agenda and is believed to benefit disadvantaged groups of students especially. This study assesses the extent to which the association between learning outcomes and the use of digital technologies differs systematically between students with different socio-economic statuses. We start by summarizing the existing evidence on the causal effects of digital technologies on learning outcomes. We highlight the relative lack of evidence on the pedagogical use of digital technologies on disadvantaged students when compared to the general student population. The overall consensus emerging from the literature is that the causal effect of digital technologies is mixed. While it is unclear whether disadvantaged students are differently affected by them, the available evidence does not suggest that digital technologies contribute to further disparities in students' learning outcomes. Using data from PISA 2015, we document that students from low socio-economic backgrounds start using digital devices later in life, have slightly less access to ICT at home and tend to use ICT less intensively especially in out-of-school activities than their counterparts. In the multivariate analysis, we find a positive association between disadvantaged students' achievement and the use of ICT for some purposes, but only among those students who use ICT less intensively. However, we find no evidence that this association is systematically different from that of students from higher socio-economic backgrounds. The exception is the use of ICT outside of school for general purposes by low-intensity users: in this case, disadvantaged students would particularly benefit from using ICT more intensively. Furthermore, we also find that - among low-intensity users of ICT - the probability of being a resilient student is positively correlated with the use of ICT at school for educational purposes and at home for schoolwork and general purposes. More generally, our research suggests that low-intensity users of ICT are likely to be using ICT sub-optimally, both at home and at school, and would benefit (in terms of PISA scores) from using ICT more intensively. However, the fact that medium and high-intensity users of ICT typically would not gain from additional ICT use is consistent with the hypothesis that the relationship between use of ICT and learning outcomes is inversely U-shaped. |
| Keywords: | Digital technologies, Low socio-economic status, Students' Achievement, PISA |
| JEL: | I21 I24 I29 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc106999&r=edu |
| By: | Christian Belzil; Arnaud Maurel; Modibo Sidibé |
| Abstract: | Using data from a Canadian field experiment on the financial barriers to higher education, we estimate the distribution of the value of financial aid for prospective students, and relate it to parental socio-economic background, individual skills, risk and time preferences. Our results point out that a considerable share of prospective students are affected by credit constraints. We find that most of the individuals are willing to pay a sizable interest premium above the prevailing market rate for the option to take up a loan, with a median interest rate wedge equal to 6.6 percentage points for a $1,000 loan. The willingness-to-pay for financial aid is highly heterogeneous across students, with preferences and in particular discount factors, playing a key role in accounting for this variation. |
| JEL: | I22 I23 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23641&r=edu |
| By: | Weinstein, Russell (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) |
| Abstract: | Using Baccalaureate and Beyond data, I study whether university quality, both absolute and relative to other universities in the region, affects earnings one and ten years after graduation, controlling for the individual's SAT score. One year after graduation, high SAT score students earn 12% less if their university's regional rank is worse by 35 places, conditional on absolute university quality. This effect disappears ten years after graduation. The results suggest initial job quality does not have long-run career effects. The results also confirm the initial importance of a university's regional rank, an often overlooked dimension of university quality. |
| Keywords: | labor market return to higher education, employer learning, statistical discrimination |
| JEL: | I23 J31 D83 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10911&r=edu |
| By: | Liu, Ling; Wan, Qian |
| Abstract: | Using the data from Chinese Household Income Project, we study the effect of education expansion on intergenerational mobility of education measured with intergenerational transmission of education (ITE) through an exogenous shock, higher education expansion in 1999. Measuring ITE with years of schooling, higher education expansion (HEE) significantly decreases ITE, meaning that the gap of years of schooling between the children from different family educational background is narrowed by HEE and intergeneration mobility of education is promoted by HEE. However, when we take school quality into account and measure ITE with score of college entrance examination (CEE), HEE insignificantly decreases ITE measured with score of CEE, indicating that HEE fails to reduce the gap of higher education quality between the children from different family educational background and the inequality of higher education still maintains in some way even after HEE. We also find that ITE measured with years of schooling has an inverted-U relationship with college admission rate and ITE measured with score of CEE seems not correlate with college admission rate, which directly demonstrate the theories of MMI and EMI in the field of sociology. We further investigate the internal mechanism of the effects and we consider that the original of the inequality of higher education is the inequality of basic education. At last, we investigate the heterogeneity in the effect of HEE on ITE by gender, type of Hukou and category of CEE. |
| Keywords: | Higher Education Expansion; Intergenerational Transmission of Education; Inequality of Opportunity |
| JEL: | I28 J62 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80616&r=edu |
| By: | Luz Karime Abadía Alvarado |
| Abstract: | Abstract This paper measures the math and reading gender score gap of Colombian students in the Pisa test. Estimations confirm that on average, when comparing boys and girls with similar individual, family and school characteristics boys outperform girls in math and the opposite happens in reading. Moreover, using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition I find that observables favor girls and account for the 22% and 34% of the gap in math and reading respectively. This effect is due mainly to individual factors, that is, if girls were not in a greater proportion in the last scholar grades of secondary education and they had not a lower repetition grade in comparison with boys, the gap would be greater in math and lower in reading. ****** Resumen Este trabajo mide la brecha de género académica en matemáticas y lectura de los estudiantes colombianos en las pruebas PISA. Los resultados de las estimaciones confirman que, en promedio, cuando se compararan niños y niñas con similares características individuales, familiares y escolares los niños obtienen mejores puntajes que las niñas en matemáticas y lo contrario sucede en lectura. Adicionalmente, usando la descomposición de Blinder-Oaxaca se encuentra que las características observables favorecen a las niñas y éstas explican el 22% y el 34% de la brecha en matemáticas y lectura respectivamente. Este efecto se debe principalmente a las características individuales, es decir, si las niñas no estuvieran en mayor proporción en los últimos grados del bachillerato y adicionalmente si ellas no tuvieran una menor tasa de repitencia escolar en comparación con los niños, la brecha en matemáticas sería mayor y la de lenguaje menor. |
| Keywords: | PISA, gender score gap, performance, math, reading, inequality****** PISA, brecha de género escolar, desempeño, matemáticas, lectura, desigualdad. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–04–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000416:015675&r=edu |
| By: | Francis Makamu (Oklahoma State University); Mehtabul Azam (Oklahoma State University); Harounan Kazianga (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Using the rollout of the schistosomiasis campaign in Nigeria as a quasi-experiment, we examine the impact of the disease control program on school age children education outcomes. Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease caused by infections from a small worm. Its most severe effects hamper growth and cognitive development of children. The mass campaign targeted four states that saw large reduction in the infectious disease afterwards. Using difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the cohort exposed to the treatment in rural areas accumulated an additional 0.6 years of education compared to cohort not exposed to the treatment. Moreover, the impact of the schistosomiasis treatment is mainly on girls residing in rural areas. |
| Keywords: | Schistosomiasis; Disease Control; Child Education; Nigeria. |
| JEL: | I15 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:okl:wpaper:1711&r=edu |
| By: | Molly Schnell; Janet Currie |
| Abstract: | Using data on all opioid prescriptions written by physicians from 2006 to 2014, we uncover a striking relationship between opioid prescribing and medical school rank. Even within the same specialty and county of practice, physicians who completed their initial training at top medical schools write significantly fewer opioid prescriptions annually than physicians from lower ranked schools. Additional evidence suggests that some of this gradient represents a causal effect of education rather than patient selection across physicians or physician selection across medical schools. Altering physician education may therefore be a useful policy tool in fighting the current epidemic. |
| JEL: | I1 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23645&r=edu |
| By: | Dario Sansone (Georgetown University); Pooya Almasi (Georgetown University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we create an algorithm to predict which students are eventually going to drop out of US high school using information available in 9th grade. We show that using a naive model - as implemented in many schools - leads to poor predictions. In addition to this, we explain how schools can obtain more precise predictions by exploiting the big data available to them, as well as more sophisticated quantitative techniques. We also compare the performances of econometric techniques like Logistic Regression with Machine Learning tools such as Support Vector Machine, Boosting and LASSO. We offer practical advice on how to apply the new Machine Learning codes available in Stata to the high dimensional datasets available in education. Model parameters are calibrated by taking into account policy goals and budget constraints. |
| Date: | 2017–08–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:scon17:5&r=edu |
| By: | Denning, Jeffrey T. (Brigham Young University) |
| Abstract: | Financial aid has been shown to affect student outcomes from enrollment to graduation. However, effects on graduation can be driven either by marginal students induced to enroll by financial aid, or by inframarginal students who would have enrolled anyway but received additional financial aid. This paper identifies the effect of financial aid on inframarginal students rather than the combined effect on marginal and inframarginal students by examining a change in financial aid that did not change enrollment. I find that additional financial aid accelerates graduation for university seniors and increases persistence for sophomores and juniors. To do this, I examine a discrete change in the amount of federal financial aid available to financially independent students. I find that financial aid received by needier students is more likely to positively affect educational outcomes. |
| Keywords: | financial aid, graduation |
| JEL: | I22 I23 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10913&r=edu |
| By: | Saing, Chan Hang; Cannonier, Colin |
| Abstract: | We exploit the exogenous variations of arsenic contamination across regions in Cambodia and apply two-period difference-in-differences (DID) to examine the impact of arsenic-contaminated groundwater on school participation among children aged 5-17. We find that conditional on the DID assumption, a standard deviation increase in the arsenic reduced the probability of having ever been enrolled for children aged 5-17 by approximately 0.017. The effects for girls are slightly larger than those for boys. Our results are robust to adding parental education, province fixed effects and zone trends. We also show that children of all specific age groups experienced the reduction in their probabilities of having ever been enrolled, while the children, who were between 12 and 17 years old, currently enrolled and active in the labor market, experienced more reduction in school enrollment relative to their peers, who were not active in the labor market. |
| Keywords: | Arsenic,Cambodia,Difference-in-Differences,School participation |
| JEL: | O15 I28 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:95&r=edu |
| By: | Arozamena, Leandro; Ruffo, Hernán |
| Abstract: | We assess the importance education as a signal of workers skills and the e¤ects of poor signaling quality on labor market outcomes. We do so by merging a frictional labor market model with a signaling setup where there is a privately observed idiosyncratic component in the cost of education. Given that highly skilled workers cannot correctly signal their abilities, their wages will be lower and they will not be matched to the "right" vacancies, or may be unemployed. Skilled workers will then have lower incentives to move to high productivity markets. Furthermore, fewer vacancies will be created in labor markets where skills matter, and incentives for workers to invest in education will be lower. Overall, an economy where education is a noisier signal generates lower educational attainment, higher unemployment and lower productivity. In addition, we provide evidence suggesting that education plays a poor signaling role in Latin American countries. We then calibrate our model using Peruvian data, and through a quantitative exercise we show that this mechanism could be relevant to explain the relatively bad performance of labor markets in Latin American countries. |
| Keywords: | Educación, Economía, Trabajo y protección social, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblpap:916&r=edu |
| By: | Duque, Valentina; Rosales-Rueda, María; Sánchez, Fabio |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how early-life conditions interact with subsequent human capital investments to influence future educational outcomes. To provide causal evidence, we exploit two sources of exogenous variation: i) variation in early-life environments resulting from a child's exposure to extreme rainfall and drought shocks in early-life; and ii), variation in subsequent investments resulting from the availability of conditional cash transfers (CCT) that promote investments in children's health and education. Using Colombian administrative data, we combine a natural experiment with a regression discontinuity design using the CCT assignment rule. Results show that, although the CCT has an overall positive impact on children's educational outcomes, it does not have a differential effect on children exposed to early-life shocks; however, the overall effect of the program is large enough to mitigate the negative impact of the weather shock. These findings have important policy implications as they provide evidence of the role of social policies in closing gaps generated by early-life trauma. |
| Keywords: | Desarrollo social, Educación, Equidad e inclusión social, Investigación socioeconómica, Salud, Niñez, Familia, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblpap:955&r=edu |
| By: | Cortés, Darwin; Attanassio, Orazio; Gallego, Juan; Maldonado, Darío; Rodríguez, Paul; Charpak, Nathalie; Tessier, Rejean; Ruiz, Juan Gabriel; Hernández, Tiberio; Uriza, Felipe |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyze the relationship between skills and some outcomes later in life for a population of premature children. Pretreatment skills and characteristics are good predictors of childhood and adulthood skills and outcomes. Income per capita and parents education at birth are positively correlated with home environment at 6 and 12 months of corrected age. Moreover, parents education and the proportion of workers at home are correlated with the number of preschool years attended by children. Interestingly, health indicators taken during the first year of life are critical factors for decision to enroll into a university, to obtain better results in math scores and earn larger wages. |
| Keywords: | Educación, Economía, Niñez, Familia, Mujer, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblpap:915&r=edu |