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on Education |
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Issue of 2018‒05‒14
thirteen papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Hideo Akabayashi (Faculty of Economics, Keio University); Kayo Nozaki (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kochi University); Shiho Yukawa (Faculty of Economics, Teikyo University) |
| Abstract: | Recent research suggests that family background such as parental education and poverty may have different influences on children by gender of the child. In developed countries, the gender gap in the proportion majoring in science and mathematics (STEM) does not necessarily shrink as the overall gender disparity narrows in educational achievement. There are, however, few studies on the specific roles of household background, particularly the difference in investment behavior of money and time, and the role of interaction between cognitive ability and non-cognitive ability. In this paper, using the Japan Child Panel Survey, we first examine the gender differences in the test scores of mathematics and language, preference for these subjects, and educational investment from parents. Next, we analyzed whether the family environment has different effects on these variables for each gender. Our main results are follows. Firstly, we did not find statistically significant gender differences in the average score of mathematical test scores and ratio of top 10% students. Compared to boys, girls did not show statistically significant differences in preferences for mathematics, but did showed statistically significant preferences for languages. Secondly, the income elasticity of expenditure on after school activities were larger to girls, especially of expenditure on artistic lessons. |
| Keywords: | Education, Academic outcome, Panel Data, Gender gap, STEM |
| JEL: | I20 I24 J16 |
| Date: | 2018–03–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2018-004&r=edu |
| By: | Kieron Barclay; Torkild Lyngstad; Dalton Conley |
| Abstract: | There has long been interest in the extent to which effects of social stratification extend and persist across generations. We take a novel approach to this question by asking whether birth order and sibling group size in the parental generation influences the educational attainment of their children. To address this question we use Swedish population data on cohorts born 1960-1982. To study the effects of parental birth order and family size we apply a cousin fixed effects design and exploit information on twin births in the parents generation. Relative to having a first-born mother, having a second-born or fifth-born mother is associated with educational attainment at age 30 being 4% and 8% of a standard deviation lower, respectively. After adjusting for attained parental education and social class, the parental birth order effect is heavily attenuated. Nevertheless, we do find that children who share the same birth order and gender as their parents attain slightly more education, and this is particularly pronounced when the parents have higher levels of education themselves. We do not find clear or consistent evidence for parental sibling group size effects. Overall our results suggest that birth order and family size effects operate through a Markovian process of transmission. |
| JEL: | D1 I24 J1 J13 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24530&r=edu |
| By: | Ferraro, Simona |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses how the integration of ICT in education has affected the mathematics test scores for Italian students measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 data. The problem of endogeneity that affects survey data in this area, is addressed by applying the Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) methodology as in Cabras & Tena Horrillo (2016). The BART methodology needs a prior and likelihood functions using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to obtain the posterior distribution. Controlling for socioeconomic, demographic and school factors, the predicted posterior distribution implies an increase, on average, of 16 points in the test scores. The result indicates that the use of ICT at school has a positive and strong impact on mathematic test scores. |
| Keywords: | ICT Bayesian additive regression tree Posterior distribution, PISA |
| JEL: | C25 I20 O33 |
| Date: | 2018–04–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:86175&r=edu |
| By: | Garcia, Sebastian Camarero |
| Abstract: | Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning intensity on Inequality of Educational Opportunity (IEOp), the share in educational outcome variance explained by predetermined circumstances beyond a student's control. The reform-induced increase in learning intensity had no short-term effect on IEOp. In the medium term, however, IEOp increased as differences in parental resources gained importance through support opportunities like private tuition adapting to the intensified educational process. The effect is stronger for mathematics/science than for reading, implying the existence of subject-dependent curricular flexibilities. My findings point to the importance of accounting for distributional consequences when evaluating reforms aimed at increasing the efficiency of educational systems and to the role of learning intensity for explaining changes in educational opportunities influencing social mobility. |
| Keywords: | (In)Equality of Opportunity,Educational/Learning Intensity,shortening school duration,G-8 education reform,Education & Social Mobility,Germany |
| JEL: | D04 D63 H75 I21 I24 I28 J18 J24 J62 O52 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:18021&r=edu |
| By: | Adermon, Adrian (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Lindahl, Mikael (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg); Waldenström, Daniel (Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This study estimates intergenerational correlations in mid-life wealth across three generations, and a young fourth generation, and examines how much of the parent-child association that can be explained by inheritances. Using a Swedish data set we find parent-child rank correlations of 0.3–0.4 and grandparents-grandchild rank correlations of 0.1–0.2. Conditional on parents’ wealth, grandparents’ wealth is weakly positively associated with grandchild’s wealth and the parent-child correlation is basically unchanged if we control for grandparents’ wealth. Bequests and gifts strikingly account for at least 50 per cent of the parent-child wealth correlation while earnings and education are only able to explain 25 per cent. |
| Keywords: | multigenerational mobility; bequests; mid-life wealth |
| JEL: | D31 J62 |
| Date: | 2018–05–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2018_008&r=edu |
| By: | Chong Xiang; Stephen Yeaple |
| Abstract: | A country’s welfare depends on its ability to accumulate cognitive and noncognitive human capital. However, we do not fully understand what makes some countries successful at producing human capital and even struggle with measurement. e.g. international test scores are informative about the cognitive dimension but neglect the non-cognitive dimension. In this paper, we develop a multi-country, open-economy general-equilibrium framework in which countries’ ability to turn resources into human capital along the cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions is revealed by the endogenous educational and occupational choices of its citizens and their subsequent performance on international exams. Our model allows us to estimate countries’ underlying productivities of cognitive and non-cognitive human capital. We find that high test scores do not necessarily imply high cognitive productivities (e.g. Switzerland, Hong Kong) and that many countries with low test scores have high non-cognitive productivities (e.g. the U.S. and U.K.). We then aggregate over these two dimensions to construct a single educational quality index, and illustrate its intuition using an iso-education-quality curve. We use our model to decompose variation in output per capita across countries into a component involving the educational quality index and another involving output TFP. This exact decomposition shows that the differences in cognitive and noncognitive productivities across countries have large implications for differences in output per worker. These results help quantify the potential payoffs of education policies and clarify their objective; e.g. excessive attention to test scores may decrease aggregate output. International trade plays an important role in our model because the gains from trade help to compensate a country for uneven productivity across human capital types. In counterfactual exercises, we show that if barriers to trade are completely eliminated, we would obtain a very different iso-education-quality curve. This implies large improvements of overall education quality, and large gains from trade, for the countries with strong comparative advantages in producing cognitive (e.g. S. Korea would gain 30.1% to 44.1% of its output) or non-cognitive human capital (e.g. the Netherlands would gain 18.8% to 55.6%). |
| JEL: | F16 I21 I25 O15 O43 O47 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24524&r=edu |
| By: | Krämer, Marion; Kumar, Santosh; Vollmer, Sebastian |
| Abstract: | We present experimental evidence on the impact of delivering double-fortified salt (DFS), salt fortified with iron and iodine, through the Indian school-feeding program called “midday meal” on anemia, cognition, and math and reading outcomes of primary school children. We conducted a field experiment that randomly provided one-year supply of DFS at a subsidized price to public primary schools in one of the poorest regions of India. The DFS treatment had significantly positive impacts on hemoglobin levels and reduced the prevalence of any form of anemia by 9.3 percentage points (or about 20 percent) but these health gains did not translate into statistically significant impacts on cognition and test scores. While exploring the heterogeneity in effects, we find that treatment had statistically significant gains in anemia and test scores among children with higher treatment compliance. We further estimate that the intervention was very cost effective and can potentially be scaled up rather easily. |
| Keywords: | Double-fortified salt,education,anemia,school feeding,India,randomized controlled trial |
| JEL: | C93 I1 O11 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:203&r=edu |
| By: | Abel Bojar |
| Abstract: | The determinants of public spending composition have been studied from three broad perspectives in the scholarly literature: functional economic pressures, institutional constraints and party-political determinants. This paper engages with the third perspective by placing intra-governmental dynamics in the center of the analysis. Building on the portfolio allocation approach in the coalition formation literature and the common pool perspective in public budgeting, I argue that spending ministers with party-political backing from the Finance Minister or the Prime Minister are in a privileged positon to obtain extra funding for their policy jurisdictions compared to their colleagues without such support or without any partisan affiliation (non-partisan ministers). I test these propositions via a system of equations on six spending categories using seemingly unrelated regressions on a panel of 32 parliamentary democracies over two decades and offer largely supportive empirical evidence. With the exception of education, I provide evidence that budget shares accruing to key spending departments reflect this party-political logic of spending outcomes. In addition to the econometric results, I also illustrate the impact of ministerial alignment by short qualitative accounts from selected country cases. |
| Keywords: | Public spending, budget composition, cabinet, ministers, coalition |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eiq:eileqs:133&r=edu |
| By: | Seira Suzuki (PhD. Student, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigate the effect of out-of-school activity in elementary school days on one’s future income. In order to analyze specifically, the model includes extra-curricular activities in junior high school, years of schooling, marital status and occupation. They could be influenced by the activity and also have effects on income. The data used for the analysis is the Preference Parameters Study. Related variables are extract and their relationship is calculated by path analysis. The result is in case of female, cultural activities have significant effect on income via schooling. In case of male, educational and sports activities increase one’s future income. |
| Keywords: | Out-of-school activity, income, path analysis |
| JEL: | I24 Z10 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osp:wpaper:18e008&r=edu |
| By: | Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto; Ugo Troiano |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that social capital increases economic growth by raising government investment in human capital. We present a model of stochastic endogenous growth with imperfect political agency. Only some people correctly anticipate the future returns to current spending on public education. Greater social diffusion of information makes this knowledge more widespread among voters. As a result, we find it alleviates myopic political incentives to underinvest in human capital, and it helps the selection of politicians that ensure high productivity in public education. Through this mechanism, we show that social capital raises the equilibrium growth rate of output and reduces its volatility. We provide evidence consistent with the predictions of our model. Individuals with higher social capital are more informed about their government. Countries with higher social capital spend a higher share of output on public education. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 H4 H52 I22 I25 O43 Z13 |
| Date: | 2018–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24533&r=edu |
| By: | Tani, Massimiliano |
| Abstract: | This paper studies occupational licensing as a possible cause of poor labour market outcomes among economic migrants. The analysis uses panel data from Australia, which implements one of the world’s largest selective immigration programmes, and applies both cross-sectional and panel estimators. Licensing emerges as acting as an additional selection hurdle, mostly improving wages and reducing over-education and occupational downgrade of those working in licensed jobs. However, not every migrant continues working in a licensed occupation after settlement. In this case there is substantial skill wastage. These results do not change over time, after employers observe migrants’ productivity and migrants familiarise with the workings of the labour market, supporting the case for tighter coordination between employment and immigration policies to address the under-use of migrants’ human capital. |
| Keywords: | skilled immigration,over-education,occupational downgrade,immigration policy,occupational licensing |
| JEL: | J8 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:206&r=edu |
| By: | Dieter Rebitzer; Anna Jasmin Pahl |
| Abstract: | The increasing internationalization of the real estate investment markets demands increasing sensitivity and openness of the executives. Interdisciplinary thinking and acting in an international environment becomes a critical success factor. For this reason, international communication and management competences must be integrated in real estate studies.The objective is to provide students as future leaders with intercultural knowledge and skills. This will enable them to make informed decisions and economic analyzes from an international perspective with regard to the execution of a project development, the investment in existing properties, refurbishment concepts or divestment strategies.This paper deals with the question of how international student competitions can help in this context. At such events, students from several universities from different cultures and countries work together in multicultural teams to find solutions for a customer-oriented task.The first part of the paper presents and evaluates various models and concepts of student competitions. In the second part, a non-compulsory module is shown as an example for a successful implementation in the real-estate study programs of the Nürtingen-Geislingen University. The third part provides an outlook on how these models can be further developed. |
| Keywords: | International Culture; International Management; International Property Markets; Management and Leadership; Real Estate Education |
| JEL: | R3 |
| Date: | 2017–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2017_360&r=edu |
| By: | Tafesse, W.; |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first to provide evidence of a direct causal impact of iodine fortification in early life on cognitive skills in childhood. I apply a differences-indifferences strategy using exogenous variation from a nationwide iodine fortification policy in India, comparing test scores of school aged children in naturally iodine sufficient and deficient districts over time. I find that the policy increased the probability of attaining basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2.67 - 5.83%. Previous papers find a larger effect on longer term human capital for women. I do not find a gender differential for basic skills but I observe a positive effect on more difficult literacy tasks for girls but not for boys. Additionally, I find that the male treatment effect on basic numeracy vary with district level son preference. |
| Keywords: | early life; iodine; cognitive ability; |
| JEL: | I15 I18 I21 J13 |
| Date: | 2018–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:18/10&r=edu |