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on Education |
| By: | John Haisken-DeNew (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne); Cain Polidano (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne); Chris Ryan (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne) |
| Abstract: | People with disability face considerable difficulty participating fully in work and the wider community, due in part to poor schooling outcomes. To enable students with disability to meet their potential, the governments provide extra funding to schools to help them meet their special learning needs. Such funding includes extra funding for meeting diverse student needs under formula-based block grant arrangements, funding for specific programs and funding that is targeted at the individual level. In this study, we take a first-step in examining outcomes from targeted funding, over and above outcomes from other funding sources, in mainstream public schools in Victoria under the Program for Student with Disability (PSD). We use information on disability and child development in the first year of school from the Australian Education and Development Census (AEDC), linked to Year 3 NAPLAN and information on PSD receipt from Year 1 to Year 3. We find that only around 17% of mainstream public-school students with disability who are in the bottom quarter of the state developmentally receive ongoing targeted funding under the PSD between 2012 and 2015. Using multivariate regression and rich administrative student data to control for differences between students with disability who do and do not receive targeted funding, we find that the receipt of PSD is strongly associated with being exempt from sitting NAPLAN, which obstructs any proper examination of the educational outcomes from funding. These results raise the prospect of extending existing funding according to developmental need, but caution that any such change should be accompanied with measures that ensure funding outcomes can be assessed. |
| Keywords: | School funding, disability, standardized test scores |
| JEL: | I22 I24 I28 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2017n29&r=edu |
| By: | Fabián Slonimczyk; Marco Francesconi; Anna Yurko |
| Abstract: | In 2009, Russia introduced a reform that changed the admissions process in all universities. Before 2009, admission decisions were based on institution-specific entry exams; the reform required universities to determine their decisions on the results of a national high-school test known as Unified State Exam (USE). One of the main goals of the reform was to make education in top colleges accessible to students from peripheral areas who typically did not enroll in university programs. Using panel data from 1994 to 2014, we evaluate the effect of the USE reform on student mobility. We find the reform led to a substantial increase in mobility rates among high school graduates from peripheral areas to start college by about 12 percentage points, a three-fold increase with respect to the pre-reform mobility rate. This was accompanied by a 40-50% increase in the likelihood of financial transfers from parents to children around the time of the move and a 70% increase in the share of educational expenditures in the last year of the child’s high school. We find no effect on parental labor supply and divorce. |
| Keywords: | human capital, student migration, Russia, university admission |
| JEL: | J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6447&r=edu |
| By: | Leone, Tharcisio |
| Abstract: | This paper employs mobility matrices, univariate regressions and multivariate econometric techniques based on the recently published nationally representative household survey (PNAD-2014) from Brazil to investigate the relevance of the gendered patterns in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment between parents and their descendants. The empirical evidence from these three different approaches is absolutely unanimous: In Brazil there is a significant variation in degree of mobility across genders, with a higher mobility level for daughters than for sons. The reason for this gender gap in mobility lies in the chances of attaining the educational levels: regardless of the educational background of the parents, females have a lower chance of remaining without school certificate and a greater probability to achieve a tertiary education. The results of this paper point out also that the educational attainment of children is strongly associated with the education of their most educated parent, regardless of their gender and this correlation is higher for female than for male. Concerning the evolution of the persistence in education over time, the findings indicate for both sexes a significant increase in intergeneration mobility over the last decades. However this positive evolution is much more modest when the relative deviation in education across generations is excluded from the investigation. Finally, this study has demonstrated that parental occupation levels and individual characteristics (race, locality of residence and year of birth) also have a statistically significant effect on the prospects for mobility. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility,Educational Persistence,Gender Gap,Brazil |
| JEL: | J62 I21 J16 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:201727&r=edu |
| By: | Christian Dustmann; Hyejin Ku; Do Wan Kwak |
| Abstract: | We exploit two unusual policy features of academic high schools in Seoul, South Korea—random assignment of pupils to high schools within districts and conversion of some existing single-sex schools to the coeducational (coed) type over time—to identify three distinct causal parameters: the between-school effect of attending a coed (versus a single-sex) school; the within-school effect of school-type conversion, conditional on (unobserved) school characteristics; and the effect of class-level exposure to mixed-gender (versus same-sex) peers. We find robust evidence that pupils in single-sex schools outperform their counterparts in coed schools, which could be due to single-sex peers in school and classroom, or unobservable school-level covariates. Focusing on switching schools, we find that the conversion of the pupil gender type from single-sex to coed leads to worse academic outcomes for both boys and girls, conditional on school fixed effects and time-varying observables. While for boys, the negative effect is largely driven by exposure to mixed-gender peers at school-level, it is class-level exposure to mixed-gender peers that explains this disadvantage for girls. |
| Keywords: | gender, single sex schools, school inputs, random assignment |
| JEL: | I20 J16 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6535&r=edu |
| By: | Mustafa Özer; Jan Fidrmuc; Mehmet Ali Eryurt |
| Abstract: | We study the causal effect of maternal education on childhood immunization rates. We use the Compulsory Education Law (CEL) of 1997, and the differentiation in its implementation across regions, as instruments for schooling of young mothers in Turkey. The CEL increased the compulsory years of schooling of those born after 1986 from 5 to 8 years. We find that education of mothers increases the probability of completing the full course of DPT and Hepatitis B vaccinations for their children. Furthermore, education increases the age of first marriage and birth, changes women`s and their spouse’s labour market status, and significantly affects women`s attitude towards spousal violence against women and gender discrimination in a manner that empowers women. |
| Keywords: | DPT (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus), Hepatitis B, maternal education, autonomy of women, fertility, difference-in-difference-in-differences, instrumental variable |
| JEL: | H51 H52 I12 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6439&r=edu |
| By: | Sanni Breining; Joseph Doyle; David N. Figlio; Krzysztof Karbownik; Jeffrey Roth |
| Abstract: | Birth order has been found to have a surprisingly large influence on educational attainment, yet much less is known about the role of birth order on delinquency outcomes such as disciplinary problems in school, juvenile delinquency, and adult crime: outcomes that carry significant negative externalities. This paper uses particularly rich datasets from Denmark and the state of Florida to examine these outcomes and explore potential mechanisms. Despite large differences in environments across the two areas, we find remarkably consistent results: in families with two or more children, second-born boys are on the order of 20 to 40 percent more likely to be disciplined in school and enter the criminal justice system compared to first-born boys even when we compare siblings. The data allow us to examine a range of potential mechanisms, and the evidence rules out differences in health at birth and the quality of schools chosen for children. We do find that parental time investment measured by time out of the labor force is higher for first-borns at ages 2-4, suggesting that the arrival of a second-born child extends early-childhood parental investments for first-borns. |
| JEL: | J01 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6330&r=edu |
| By: | Hahm, Sabrina; Kluve, Jochen |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes impacts of the Bologna Reform for Germany by using unique micro data from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Variation in treatment introduction generates exogenous assignment of students into a treatment (Bachelor) and control group (Diploma). We account for potentially remaining selection bias by estimating a 2SLS model. Our results indicate i.a. that the reform led to a significant and sizeable increase in the probability of graduating within planned instructional time. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168053&r=edu |
| By: | Michela Maria Tincani |
| Abstract: | Using a theoretical model where students care about achievement rank, I study effort choices in the classroom and show that rank concerns generate peer effects. The model’s key empirical prediction is that the effect on own achievement of increasing the dispersion in peer cost of effort is heterogeneous, depending on a student’s own cost of effort. To test this, I construct a longitudinal multi-cohort dataset of students, with data on the geographic propagation of building damages from the Chilean 2010 earthquake. I find that higher dispersion in home damages among one’s classmates led, on average, to lower own Mathematics and Spanish test scores. To be able to test the theory, I develop a novel nonlinear difference-in-differences model that estimates effect heterogeneity and that relates observed damages to unobserved cost of effort. I find that some students at the tails of the predicted cost of effort distribution benefit from higher dispersion in peer cost of effort, as predicted by the theoretical model. This finding suggests that observed peer effects on test scores are, at least partly, governed by rank concerns. |
| Keywords: | ability peer effects, rank preferences, semiparametric model |
| JEL: | C51 I29 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6331&r=edu |
| By: | Anna Christina Raute |
| Abstract: | To assess whether earnings-dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between high educated (high earning) and low educated (low earning) women, I exploit a major maternity leave benefit reform in Germany that considerably increases the financial incentives for higher educated and higher earning women to have a child. In particular, I use the large differential changes in maternity leave benefits across education and income groups to estimate the effects on fertility up to 5 years post reform. In addition to demonstrating an up to 22% increase in the fertility of tertiary educated versus low educated women, I find a positive, statistically significant effect of increased benefits on fertility, driven mainly by women at the middle and upper end of the education and income distributions. Overall, the results suggest that earnings-dependent maternity leave benefits, which compensate women commensurate with their opportunity cost of childbearing, could successfully reduce the fertility rate disparity related to mothers’ education and earnings. |
| Keywords: | fertility, fertility gaps, paid maternity leave |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J18 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6652&r=edu |
| By: | Daniel H. Weinberg; John M. Abowd; Robert F. Belli; Noel Cressie; David C. Folch; Scott H. Holan; Margaret C. Levenstein; Kristen M. Olson; Jerome P. Reiter; Matthew D. Shapiro; Jolene Smyth; Leen-Kiat Soh; Bruce D. Spencer; Seth E. Spielman; Lars Vilhuber; Christopher K. Wikle |
| Abstract: | The National Science Foundation-Census Bureau Research Network (NCRN) was established in 2011 to create interdisciplinary research nodes on methodological questions of interest and significance to the broader research community and to the Federal Statistical System (FSS), particularly the Census Bureau. The activities to date have covered both fundamental and applied statistical research and have focused at least in part on the training of current and future generations of researchers in skills of relevance to surveys and alternative measurement of economic units, households, and persons. This paper discusses some of the key research findings of the eight nodes, organized into six topics: (1) Improving census and survey data collection methods; (2) Using alternative sources of data; (3) Protecting privacy and confidentiality by improving disclosure avoidance; (4) Using spatial and spatio-temporal statistical modeling to improve estimates; (5) Assessing data cost and quality tradeoffs; and (6) Combining information from multiple sources. It also reports on collaborations across nodes and with federal agencies, new software developed, and educational activities and outcomes. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the ability of the FSS to apply the NCRN’s research outcomes and suggests some next steps, as well as the implications of this research-network model for future federal government renewal initiatives. |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:17-59&r=edu |