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on Education |
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Issue of 2026–10–12
eighteen papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão, Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Marco Pariguana; Diether Beuermann |
| Abstract: | Choosing a school is one of the most important decisions parents make regarding their children's human capital, yet application constraints can make observed choices an imperfect measure of what parents value. We study preferences for school effectiveness and peer quality in the centralized secondary school market of Barbados, where admissions are based on a one-shot exam and parents face a binding cap on the number of schools they can list. Exploiting a policy reform that further tightened this cap, we show that parents respond by 'skipping the impossible': omitting the most selective schools from their applications, with little change in equilibrium assignments. We then estimate preferences for school effectiveness, measured by impacts on test scores and adult wages, and peer quality under alternative behavioral assumptions. Under the truth-telling assumption that applications reveal parents' most preferred schools, we find no evidence that parents value school effectiveness conditional on peer quality. In contrast, under market-stability assumptions that allow parents to omit desirable but seemingly unattainable schools, we find that parents value both school effectiveness and peer quality. The difference arises because the most selective schools are also the most effective. Thus, approaches that interpret omitted schools as less preferred than ranked ones can understate parental demand for school effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | School choice, Secondary education, Education policy |
| JEL: | I21 I24 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26230 |
| By: | Petter Lundborg; Adrian Nieto |
| Abstract: | We examine how early exposure to STEM professionals in the local neighborhood shapes children's long run educational and labor market outcomes. To identify causal effects, we use Swedish register data and several sources of variation in exposure to STEM qualified neighbors measured at the 100 by 100 meter grid. Exposure during compulsory education raises children's math performance, and evidence points to social ties as the main channel. It also increases the presence of boys and girls in science programs in high school and university, but mainly boys are more likely to complete a STEM bachelor degree. This gender gap persists into adulthood: STEM employment and earnings rise predominantly for boys. The results show that high skill professionals can serve as community based informal role models and that neighbors can shape long run educational and labor market trajectories. |
| Keywords: | STEM, Science, Neighbors, Role model, Human capital, Labor trajectory |
| JEL: | I2 J2 J3 O3 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26231 |
| By: | Caterina Pavese; Simon ter Meulen; Ludger Woessmann |
| Abstract: | Does direct integration into native schools or temporary placement in separate schools better promote the education and cultural assimilation of refugee children? In the Netherlands, primary-school-aged refugee children are placed in either integrated or separated schools depending on their randomly assigned municipality. By contrast, all secondary-school-aged arrivals are initially separated. We exploit this institutional setting in two-way fixed-effects models with age-at-arrival and municipality fixed effects. Using rich administrative data, we find that integrated schooling reduces educational attainment at age 18, particularly for children of lower-educated parents. At the same time, integrated schooling increases cultural assimilation, measured by hormonal-contraceptive usage among teenage women, particularly for children from non-Muslim-majority countries. A distinctive feature of separated schooling that may account for its positive educational effect is that it allows employing teachers specialized in native-language teaching for non-native speakers. |
| Keywords: | refugee children, schools, integration, educational attainment, contraceptives |
| JEL: | I24 I21 J13 J15 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13023 |
| By: | de Silva, Lihini (Monash University Australia); Mahmood, Rafat (Monash University); Ponnusamy, Sundar (Deakin University Australia) |
| Abstract: | Agricultural residue burning releases pollutants that prevailing winds carry across administrative boundaries. We study the effects of fire-driven pollution on the cognitive development and educational trajectories of around 700, 000 children aged 5--16 in Pakistan, combining satellite-derived burned area data, wind direction, and nationally representative learning assessments. Our treatment measure captures fires within 15 kilometers of a child's district that burn upwind; comparable downwind fires, which reflect the same agricultural activity but carry smoke away from the child, serve as a placebo. A one standard deviation increase in upwind fire exposure reduces test scores in mathematics, reading, and English by roughly 0.02 standard deviations; downwind fires have no effect. Impacts are concentrated in the school term, with no effect from summer-holiday fires. Boys and girls suffer similar cognitive losses, but over time older girls face higher dropout, consistent with lower perceived returns to female education in a patrilocal society, and child labor rises. The results survive extensive robustness checks. Agricultural burning is thus a constraint on human capital development, not only a public health issue. |
| Keywords: | agricultural fires, air pollution, cognitive development, child labor |
| JEL: | Q53 Q54 I25 J13 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18977 |
| By: | Ahmed, Hardi; de Walque, Damien B. C. M.; Lopez, Carolina |
| Abstract: | The generational evolution of gender gaps in education in Sub-Saharan Africa remains poorly documented at the regional scale. This paper uses micro data from Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys from 35 countries (approximately 736, 000 individuals), complemented by international educational assessment and monitoring program (managed by the Conference of Ministers of Education of French-Speaking Countries) test scores for 14 francophone countries. The paper traces gender differences in educational attainment and learning by birth cohort. The findings show that attainment gaps narrow sharply across cohorts: the female disadvantage falls from 13–15 percentage points in primary and secondary attendance and 1.9 years of schooling among those born in the 1970s to far smaller values among the most recent cohorts, and it is statistically insignificant across most of the youngest birth cohorts. Among those born after 1999, females exceed males in secondary attendance and years of education in a majority of countries. However, convergence is uneven. It partly reflects stagnation in boys’ secondary attendance rather than female gains; learning gaps show no uniform direction across countries and often run counter to attainment; and wider attainment gaps persist among rural, poorer, and Muslim populations. |
| Date: | 2026–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11455 |
| By: | Benjamin W. Arold; Afonso Alves Monteiro; Constantine Yannelis |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether school prayer and Bible reading affect adult beliefs and behavior. We exploit the U.S. Supreme Court's early-1960s school-prayer decisions, which removed these practices only from states where they were still legal. Linking this state-by-cohort variation to adult outcomes in the General Social Survey, we estimate the long-run effects of removing school prayer on religiosity, family formation, labor market outcomes, gender attitudes, and social views. The abolition of school prayer lowers adult religiosity; reduces marriage and fertility; increases employment; and shifts gender and selected social attitudes in a less traditional direction. The employment effect is driven by women, and may operate partly through decreased full-time homemaking and less traditional gender roles. A decomposition indicates that school prayer bans explain more than half the decline in American religious attendance, and roughly one quarter of the decline in fertility and rise in female labor force participation. The findings show that even brief daily devotional practices in childhood can shape adult beliefs, family life, and economic behavior. |
| Keywords: | School prayer; religious education; religiosity; childhood socialization; family formation; female labor supply |
| JEL: | Z12 I21 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26244 |
| By: | Shruti Jha; John List; Rebecca C. Royer; Anya Samek |
| Abstract: | Do early investments in parents pay off even when treatment effects for children appear to fade out quickly? We answer this question by leveraging a field experiment in which households with 3-5 year-old children were randomized into a parenting program, a preschool, or a control group, combined with a natural experiment (Covid-19 school closures) that occurred ten years later. Prior to the closures, treatment effects on academic achievement had faded to zero across all groups. Yet, with Covid-19 school closures, effects of the parenting program re-emerge: test scores in control and preschool groups drop by roughly 0.25-0.30 SD, whereas scores in the parenting group drop by only 0.11 SD (difference: p = 0.01). Our findings suggest that parenting programs can generate latent human capital that only becomes visible when complementary school inputs are removed. This result is consonant with parental and school investments acting as substitutes in skill production. Because this latent parental capacity pays off precisely when school inputs fail, standard measurement tools for early childhood programs can miss crucial state-contingent value. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:framed:00841 |
| By: | Anjali Adukia; Matthew Bonci; Paula Dastres Gallardo; Emileigh Harrison; Jake Nicoll; Teodora Szasz |
| Abstract: | Emotional intelligence constitutes a key component of human capital, shaped partially by educational materials. Using machine learning and generative AI tools, we examine emotional content in public-school textbooks and children’s literature. A stark mismatch emerges: text exposes children to a broad emotional range, but images overwhelmingly depict happiness and calm, regardless of emotions described in text on the same page. Nearly half of pages show zero overlap between the emotions described in text and those shown in images. This pattern persists across time, contexts, and identities. Household purchases and library inventories suggest content may be endogenously shaped by consumer demand favoring “positive” cover imagery, implying market forces narrow the emotional landscape children encounter. |
| JEL: | I20 I21 I24 L82 Z11 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35789 |
| By: | Habtamu Beshir (UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies); Emla Fitzsimons (UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies); Dominic Kelly (UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies); Lindsey Macmillan (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities) |
| Abstract: | We examine how different dimensions of adolescent development---cognitive skills, socio-emotional functioning, and mental health---are associated with educational attainment and labour-market engagement at age 23. Using the Millennium Cohort Study, we show that these dimensions are linked to distinct outcomes in early adulthood. Attention difficulties are most strongly associated with lower educational attainment, while emotional, conduct, and peer difficulties are more closely related to weaker labour-market engagement and a higher likelihood of being not in education, employment, or training (NEET). Persistent behavioural and mental-health difficulties are particularly predictive of NEET status. We further document substantial socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment and labour-market engagement and assess the extent to which adolescent skills and mental health account for these disparities. Our findings show that different dimensions of adolescent development are associated with distinct pathways through education and into the labour market, while also contributing to persistent socioeconomic inequalities in early-adult outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Adolescent skills; mental health; educational attainment; NEET; labour-market outcomes. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-09 |
| By: | Andrea Weber; David Card; Wolfgang Dauth; Wolfgang Frimmel; Julia Schmieder; Rudolf Winter-Ebmer |
| Abstract: | How big are the gains to international migration, and how do they vary across migrants? We use linked administrative data for Austria and Germany, focusing on migrants who were steadily employed 2-4 years before moving and their former co-workers as a comparison group in a difference-in-differences design. Combining origin- and destination-country data for five years after migration allows us to assess gains for both migrants who remain abroad and those who return. Austrian migrants to Germany experience an immediate and persistent increase of around 13% in daily wages relative to their matched co-workers, while German migrants to Austria gain about 4%. The higher returns for Austrians are mainly driven by higher average wages in Germany rather than differential selection. Consistent with a dynamic learning model, returns are largest for migrants who remain in the destination, smaller for those returning after 1-4 years, and zero for those returning within a year. To interpret these findings, we conduct a parallel analysis of domestic migrants moving to a larger city (Vienna or one of Germany's five largest cities). These "big-city" movers experience wage gains of about 5% in Austria and 10% in Germany. |
| Keywords: | international migration, domestic migration, returns to migration, co-worker design |
| JEL: | J61 F22 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26250 |
| By: | Michel Beine; Giovanni Peri; Morgan Raux; Lilie Timricht |
| Abstract: | We provide the first global empirical evidence on the relationship between international master’s education and entrepreneurship. Using large-scale longitudinal data from LinkedIn/Revelio, we document that international master’s graduates are systematically more likely than domestic graduates to create firms across the world’s leading destinations for international students. We further show how this entrepreneurial advantage varies across fields of study, gender, origin and destination countries. In addition, we document the geography of post-graduation firm creation, highlighting the international mobility of entrepreneurial activity among former international students. Taken together, the results offer a new global perspective on the economic impact of international student mobility and the contribution of international master’s graduates to entrepreneurship, innovation, and business dynamism worldwide. |
| Keywords: | foreign students, entrepreneurship, master’s programs, STEM |
| JEL: | F22 I23 M13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13014 |
| By: | Klaus Desmet; Dávid Krisztián Nagy; Esteban Rossi-Hansberg |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how human capital shapes the economic geography of development. We propose a model in which human capital acquisition costs vary across space, and regions with higher human capital invest more in human-capital-augmenting technology. Locations are interconnected through costly migration and trade. Using data on local income and schooling, we quantify the model at a 1° x 1° resolution globally. Over two centuries, the model mostly predicts persistence in the spatial distribution of development. Proportionally lowering education costs in sub-Saharan Africa raises local outcomes but lowers global welfare, while the same policy in Latin America improves global welfare. An alternative policy that equalizes educational costs across sub-Saharan Africa generates worse outcomes, as population shifts within the region toward less productive areas. These results are driven by the estimated negative correlation between education costs and local fundamentals, as well as spatial inefficiencies due to externalities. |
| Keywords: | human capital; geography; development; education policy; global inequality; dynamic spatial models |
| JEL: | E24 F10 I24 J24 O11 O18 O33 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–09–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:103849 |
| By: | Margaret Leighton (University of St Andrews); Jamin D Speer (University of Memphis) |
| Abstract: | There is a large gender gap in who chooses STEM majors, yet decades of research have failed to explain this gap in its entirety. We use extensive data on incoming college freshmen to estimate the importance of ability (both test-based and self-assessed), life goals, other self-assessed traits, high school courses, and family background in explaining the gender gap in STEM majors. Even with this detailed data, we can explain only 39% of the gender gap. A Gelbach decomposition shows that self-assessed ability (26%) and high school courses (12%) account for the bulk of the explained gap, while goals explain little and in fact controlling for goals slightly widens the gender gap. Goals are similarly uninformative of the gender gap in STEM persistence from freshman to senior year. On the other hand, goals contribute substantially to gender differences in biology and some non-STEM majors, particularly business, education, and health, but remain uninformative of the gap for the majority of STEM subjects. We conclude that while life goals are strongly related to major choice, gender-based differences in these goals are not the missing piece to the STEM gender gap puzzle. |
| Keywords: | STEM; gender gap; major choice; field of study; science degrees |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I26 I21 |
| Date: | 2026–09–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:san:econdp:2603 |
| By: | Karen Macours; Julieta Vera Rueda; Duncan Webb |
| Abstract: | Menstrual stigma is pervasive in low- and middle-income countries, yet we know little about its consequences for girls’ human capital. In a field experiment in 140 schools in Madagascar (N=2, 256), we evaluate a school hygiene program focused on reducing menstrual stigma through sanitation infrastructure, menstrual products, and teacher- and peer-led sensitization. The program generates substantial learning gains (0.15 SD) without improving attendance or health. The learning gains are instead explained by psychosocial mechanisms: reduced stigma, lower stress measured by heart rate, and a better school social climate. Our results suggest that menstruation can be a meaningful barrier to girls’ learning. |
| Keywords: | Menstrual stigma, Learning outcomes, School climate, Psychosocial mechanisms, Social norms, Adolescent girls, Field experiment |
| JEL: | C93 I12 I21 J16 O12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2605 |
| By: | Arcia, Gustavo (Human Capital and Education Returns Lab); Macdonald, Kevin (Human Capital and Education Returns Lab); Patrinos, Harry (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville) |
| Abstract: | Publicly funded school choice is examined as a form of education public-private partnership (PPP), with cross-national differences interpreted through institutional design rather than private provision alone. A novel theoretical framework derives two indicators – alignment and coherence – from a formal utility-theoretic model of PPP maturity, applied here for the first time to education. Across seven systems, the results reveal substantial differences in how competition, autonomy, accountability, and information are jointly structured. The findings highlight institutional architecture and complementarity as central to the design of effective education PPPs. |
| Keywords: | school choice, public-private partnerships (PPPs), education vouchers, competition in education, autonomy, accountability |
| JEL: | I21 H42 H52 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18972 |
| By: | Ah-Reum Lee; William H. Dow; Jacqueline M. Torres |
| Abstract: | A large literature examines the economic and health returns to college education. We extend this literature by studying the upward intergenerational effects of children’s education on parental mortality. We exploit Korea’s 1993 Higher Education Reform, which we estimate raised college completion by 13 percentage points among eldest children in the 1974–1983 birth cohorts relative to the prior 10-year cohort. Using data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, reduced-form estimates indicate a 27% (s.e.=10%) reduction in mortality among parents whose oldest child was in the reform-affected cohort. Because the reform affected college completion but not other education levels or quality, we use it as an instrumental variable (IV) for child college completion. IV estimates indicate a 20% (s.e.=7%) reduction in parental mortality for children induced to complete college by the reform. These parents received greater financial support and contact from their children and had lower smoking and higher physical activity, although these mechanisms explain only a small share of the mortality benefit. Effects were larger for parents of daughters in reduced-form analyses, although IV estimates did not differ significantly by child gender. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms through which children’s college education affects parental mortality. |
| JEL: | I12 I26 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35792 |
| By: | Bensch, Gunther; Rose, Julian; Ankel-Peters, Jörg; Brodeur, Abel |
| Abstract: | Hahn et al. (2020, FRIENDS_EJ), published in the Economic Journal, evaluate a treatment randomized across 115 Bangladeshi primary schools that assigned students to study for one week either in groups of friends or with randomly picked peers. They find that the friends treatment improves math performance, but only among low-ability girls. We identify four sets of unresolved discrepancies: inconsistent accounts of implementation responsibilities, irregularities in the sample and group structure, misalignments between reported procedures and observed data, and implausible missing-data and attendance patterns. Taken together, these issues are not merely reporting imperfections, but reveal multiple discrepancies between the published record, earlier versions of the study, the replication data, and the two replies subsequently provided by the authors. These unresolved discrepancies preclude independent verification of material aspects of the study record and raise serious concerns about the credibility of the reported findings. |
| Keywords: | Replication, peer effects, girls' education |
| JEL: | C18 C93 I25 O12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:330 |
| By: | Arcia, Gustavo; Macdonald, Kevin; Patrinos, Harry Anthony |
| Abstract: | Publicly funded school choice is examined as a form of education public-private partnership (PPP), with cross-national differences interpreted through institutional design rather than private provision alone. A novel theoretical framework derives two indicators - alignment and coherence - from a formal utility-theoretic model of PPP maturity, applied here for the first time to education. Across seven systems, the results reveal substantial differences in how competition, autonomy, accountability, and information are jointly structured. The findings highlight institutional architecture and complementarity as central to the design of effective education PPPs. |
| Keywords: | School choice, public-private partnerships (PPPs), education vouchers, competition in education, autonomy, accountability |
| JEL: | I21 H42 H52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1827 |