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on Education |
| By: | Jo Blanden; Oliver Cassagneau-Francis; Lindsey Macmillan; Gill Wyness |
| Abstract: | Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying schools - shapes university destinations across the academic ability distribution. Using linked administrative data, we show that the main advantage conferred by private schools is not that their highachieving students are more likely to access elite degree courses, but rather that their lower-achieving students are more likely to 'overmatch' by attending more selective degree courses than might be expected given their grades. In particular, we show that lower attaining pupils from fee-paying high schools enrol in university courses around 15 percentiles higher ranked than similarly qualified state school students. The greater propensity of private school students to overmatch is driven largely by differences in application behavior, with even the weakest private school students aiming higher than their higher achieving state school peers. |
| Keywords: | higher education, educational economics, college choice, mismatch, private schools |
| Date: | 2025–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2115 |
| By: | Ulrika Ahrsjš (Stockholm School of Economics); Costas Meghir (Cowles Foundation, Yale University); MŒrten Palme (Stockholm University); Marieke Schnabel (University College London) |
| Abstract: | We examine the intergenerational effect of education policy on crime. Using administrative data that links outcomes across generations with crime records, we show that the Swedish comprehensive school reform, gradually implemented between 1949 and 1962, reduced conviction rates for both the generation directly affected by the reform and their sons. The reduction in conviction rates occurred in several types of crime. Mediation analysis suggests that key channels include increased parental educational attainment and household income, as well as reduced criminal behavior among fathers. |
| Date: | 2025–08–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2356r2 |
| By: | Carlos J. Gil-Hernández (Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti", Universita' di Firenze); Alberto Palacios-Abad (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Jonas Radl (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; WZB Berlin Social Science Center) |
| Abstract: | Despite its importance for status attainment and meritocracy, measuring effort remains elusive, often relying on indirect proxies or unreliable self-reports. This study examines how objective (cognitive effort, CogEff) and subjective (teacher-perceived effort, TpEff) measures of student effort contribute to educational inequality. We examine the predictive capacity of effort for educational performance and test the mediating and moderating roles of effort in the relationship between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and school grades. Drawing on original, representative "lab-in-the-field" data from 1, 270 fifth-graders in Spain and Germany, who performed three different incentivized real-effort tasks engaging various executive functions, four key findings emerge. First, both CogEff and TpEff predict grade point average (GPA), with TpEff having a powerful effect, more predictive even than IQ or parental SES. Second, effort—especially TpEff—is unequally distributed by parental SES and explains a substantial share of the SES-based GPA gap, on par with IQ. Third, roughly half of the GPA gap by social origin remains unexplained even after accounting for academic merit (IQ + effort). Fourth, while grading returns to CogEff are independent of SES, high-SES students are significantly less penalized for low TpEff than low-SES peers. Overall, effort predicts academic success and shapes educational (in)equality. High-SES students show higher average effort and can afford to be perceived as lazy, while hardworking low-SES students can overcome disadvantage through greater returns to teacher-perceived effort. We discuss the findings' implications for student agency, educational inequality, and fair evaluations. |
| Keywords: | effort, socio-behavioral skills, inequality, grades, socioeconomic status, laboratory study |
| JEL: | I24 I21 C91 J24 D63 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fir:econom:wp2025_09 |
| By: | Julie Berry Cullen; Gordon B. Dahl; Richard De Thorpe |
| Abstract: | How does being over- or underqualified at the beginning of a worker's career affect skill acquisition, retention, and promotion? Despite the importance of mismatch for the labor market, self-selection into jobs has made estimating these effects difficult. We overcome endogeneity concerns in the context of the US Air Force, which allocates new enlistees to over 130 different jobs based, in part, on test scores. Using these test scores, we create simulated job assignments based on factors outside of an individual's control: the available slots in upcoming training programs and the quality of other recruits entering at the same time. These factors create quasi-random variation in job assignment and hence how cognitively demanding an individual's job is relative to their own ability. We find that being overqualified for a job causes higher attrition, both during technical training and afterward when individuals are working in their assigned jobs. It also results in more behavioral problems, worse performance evaluations, and lower scores on general knowledge tests about the military taken by all workers. On the other hand, overqualification results in better performance relative to others in the same job: job-specific test scores rise both during technical training and while on the job, and these individuals are more likely to be promoted. Combined, these patterns suggest that overqualified individuals are less motivated, but still outperform others in their same job. Underqualification results in a polar opposite set of findings, suggesting these individuals are motivated to put forth more effort, but still struggle to compete when judged relative to others. Consistent with differential incentives, individuals who are overqualified are in jobs which are less valuable in terms of outside earnings potential, while the reverse is true for those who are underqualified. |
| Keywords: | job mismatch, skill acquisition, retention, promotion |
| JEL: | J24 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12104 |
| By: | Chao Fu; Hsuan-Chih (Luke) Lin; Atsuko Tanaka |
| Abstract: | College loans serve as a double-edged sword for human capital investment: While they facilitate access to education, the burden of repayment may distort post-education investments in human capital. We examine the role of college loans and loan repayment policies through a structural model in which heterogeneous individuals, faced with borrowing limits, make dynamic decisions on consumption, borrowing/saving, labor supply, and costly human capital investment (via both college education and on-the-job learning a la Ben-Porath (1967)). We estimate two versions of the model using data from the NLSY79: one with natural borrowing limits and another with parameterized limits. Counterfactual simulations based on both models suggest that, relative to the standard fixed repayment plan, income-driven repayment (IDR) plans modestly increase educational attainment, lifetime earnings, and individual welfare. Although some generous IDR plans may result in losses for the loan program itself, overall government revenue is higher under IDRs than under the standard repayment plan when lifetime income taxes are accounted for, creating a win-win scenario for both individual welfare and government revenue. |
| JEL: | I20 J01 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34221 |
| By: | Lombardini, Simone; Kondylis, Florence; Lerva, Benedetta; Heirman, Jonas; Khincha, Roshni; Uckat, Hannah Irmela |
| Abstract: | Poor nutritional choices and unhealthy behaviors are considered responsible for the rise in childhood overweight and obesity and may reinforce each other, creating a vicious cycle. This paper studies a primary school intervention designed to break the cycle early in life by replacing date bars with calorie-equivalent meals lower in sugar and fat. Leveraging the randomized pilot of a menu change in Jordan’s national school feeding program, the study shows that children consuming the alternative meals spend 8 percent less money to buy processed snacks, are more physically active (0.1 standard deviation), and go to school one extra day per year. |
| Date: | 2025–09–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11208 |