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on Education |
| By: | Daniel Montolio (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB); Pere A. Taberner (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB & KSNET) |
| Abstract: | Student performance at university significantly influences individual decisions and future opportunities, especially in labour markets. This paper analyses the impact of local crime on student performance during higher education, with a focus on potential gender differences. Following students over their bachelor’s years, the identification strategy exploits granular local crime variation – violent and non-violent crimes – near students’ residences before sitting a final exam. We consider both spatial and temporal patterns of crime exposure by estimating a panel data model with student, exam and district-month fixed-effects to provide causal estimates. Our findings suggest that violent crimes have a negative impact on student performance, while non-violent have no significant effect. Notably, the results are mainly driven by high-ability female students, with suggestive evidence that male students in the bottom or middle parts of the grade distribution are also affected. |
| Keywords: | Local violent crime, academic performance, higher education, gender differences |
| JEL: | A22 I23 J16 K42 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2025-07 |
| By: | Baumeister, Frauke (ifo Institute, University of Munich); Hanushek, Eric A. (Stanford University); Woessmann, Ludger (University of Munich) |
| Abstract: | The development of English-language skills, a near necessity in today’s global economy, is heavily influenced by historical national decisions about whether to subtitle or dub TV content. While prior studies of language acquisition have focused on schools, we show the overwhelming influence of out-of-school learning. We identify the causal effect of subtitling in a difference-in-differences specification that compares English to math skills in European countries that do and do not use subtitles. We find a large positive effect of subtitling on English-language skills of over one standard deviation. The effect is robust to accounting for linguistic similarity, economic incentives to learn English, and cultural protectiveness. Consistent with oral TV transmission, the effect is larger for listening and speaking skills than for reading. |
| Keywords: | TV, English as a foreign language, language skills, movies, dubbing, subtitles |
| JEL: | I21 Z13 L82 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17991 |
| By: | Hanol Lee; Jong-Wha Lee |
| Abstract: | This study develops a novel cross-country measure of higher education quality by leveraging the robust relationship between institution-level indicators--such as faculty-to-student ratios and global university rankings--and the earnings of graduates employed overseas. Using U.S. microdata, it shows that global rankings are strongly correlated with key quality dimensions, including research performance, teaching environment, enrollment size, international outlook, and student selectivity. Building on this relationship, a country-level index of college education quality is constructed for 98 countries, capturing variations in institutional characteristics weighted by their estimated effects on graduate earnings. To examine macroeconomic impacts, the study estimates cross-country regressions of GDP per worker, resident patenting, and R&D expenditures. An instrumental variable strategy--exploiting geographic proximity to global academic hubs--is used to address potential endogeneity. The results show that tertiary education quality has a large and statistically significant effect on all three outcomes, underscoring its role in long-run economic development and innovation capacity. |
| Keywords: | education quality, human capital, economic development, innovation, college education, university rankings |
| JEL: | I23 I25 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2025-41 |
| By: | Antman, Francisca M. (University of Colorado, Boulder); Skoy, Evelyn (Hamilton College); Flores, Nicholas E. (University of Colorado, Boulder) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the impacts of grades and information on gender gaps in college major and college dropout rates at a large public flagship university. Observational and experimental results suggest women are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to major in economics while men are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to drop out of college. Providing better information about grade distributions appears to only somewhat mitigate these impacts. These results suggest better information may blunt the impact of relative grade sensitivities on college gender gaps but may not fully outweigh the saliency of grades. Finally, we consider the extent to which aligning economics grading standards with those of competing disciplines would reduce the gender gap in economics graduates but find relatively limited impacts. |
| Keywords: | college dropout, college major, gender, higher education |
| JEL: | I23 I24 J16 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18001 |
| By: | Sander de Vries (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new insights on the importance of family background by linking 1.7 million Dutch children’s incomes to an exceptionally rich set of family characteristics — including income, wealth, education, occupation, crime, and health. Using a machine learning approach, I show that conventional analyses using parental income only considerably underestimate intergenerational dependence. This underestimation is concentrated at the extremes of the child income distribution, where families are often (dis)advantaged across multiple dimensions. Gender differences in intergenerational dependence are minimal, despite allowing for complex gender-specific patterns. A comparison with adoptees highlights the role of pre-birth factors in driving intergenerational transmission. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational mobility, inequality of opportunity |
| JEL: | I24 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2025–02–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20250010 |
| By: | Jaramillo-Echeverri, Juliana |
| Abstract: | Across the world educated women tend to have fewer children than their less-educated peers. This paper provides new stylised facts about the long-run relationship between women’s education and fertility at both the national and individual levels. I focus on Colombia, a country that experienced both a rapid fertility decline and fast expansion of education in the mid-20th century and I use data from the censuses of 1973, 1985, 1993, 2005 and 2018. The findings caution that the relationship between fertility and women’s education is not always monotonic and this relationship changes significantly depending on the aggregation of the data. At the individual level, the relationship between education and fertility holds strongly and education increases the probability of remaining childless, reduces the total number of children and the likelihood of having a birth at a younger and older age, suggesting a strong trade-off between education and fertility. Peer effects, such as the percentage of peers with secondary education, are ruled out, which suggests that the externalities of education had a moderate effect on uneducated women. On the other hand, at the national level, the fertility decline cannot be explained by education as fertility has fallen continuously in all educational groups since 1965.Across the world educated women tend to have fewer children than their less-educated peers. This paper provides new stylised facts about the long-run relationship between women’s education and fertility at both the national and individual levels. I focus on Colombia, a country that experienced both a rapid fertility decline and fast expansion of education in the mid-20th century and I use data from the censuses of 1973, 1985, 1993, 2005 and 2018. The findings caution that the relationship between fertility and women’s education is not always monotonic and this relationship changes significantly depending on the aggregation of the data. At the individual level, the relationship between education and fertility holds strongly and education increases the probability of remaining childless, reduces the total number of children and the likelihood of having a birth at a younger and older age, suggesting a strong trade-off between education and fertility. Peer effects, such as the percentage of peers with secondary education, are ruled out, which suggests that the externalities of education had a moderate effect on uneducated women. On the other hand, at the national level, the fertility decline cannot be explained by education as fertility has fallen continuously in all educational groups since 1965. |
| Keywords: | fertility, education, Colombia, census data |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rie:riecdt:116 |