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on Education |
| By: | John Eric Humphries (Yale University); Juanna Schr¿ter Joensen (University of Chicago); Gregory F. Veramendi (University of London) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how high school specialization shapes college investment decisions and their subsequent returns through dynamic complementarities. Using Swedish administrative data, we estimate a dynamic Roy model that accounts for selection on multidimensional skills, family background, prior investments, and unobserved heterogeneity. We identify the model using rich skill measures and quasi-experimental variation in program popularity. For marginal students, STEM specialization in high school increases wages by 9%, with more than half this return attributed to dynamic complementarities that enhance the productivity of subsequent college investments. Consequently, we find that counterfactual policies encouraging high school STEM specialization generate twice the returns of equivalent college-level interventions. These findings demonstrate how the timing of specialized human capital investments matters during adolescence, with important implications for education policies that encourage or restrict specialization. |
| Date: | 2025–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2446 |
| By: | Adrienne M. Lucas; Patrick J. McEwan; David Torres Irribarra |
| Abstract: | Since 1991, Chile has provided large, renewable cash grants to indigenous children in lower-income households, conditional on school enrollment. We estimate intent-to-treat effects of grant exposure on indigenous adults and their children, leveraging variation in expected grant exposure across birth cohorts and never-treated adults, and using fixed effects to absorb unobserved variables shared by adults born in the same year and community. Cohorts with the greatest exposure had 0.6 more years of schooling, 10% more hours worked, and 22% higher labor earnings, reducing pre-treatment ethnic differences. Mothers’ exposure increased their children’s early-grade test scores and reduced second-generation grant receipt. |
| JEL: | I24 I28 I38 O10 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33798 |
| By: | Frauke Baumeister; Eric A. Hanushek; Ludger Woessmann |
| 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. |
| JEL: | H0 I2 J24 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33984 |
| By: | Valentina Sontheim |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how school starting age (SSA) affects educational outcomes by disentangling the impact of relative and absolute SSA. I use a natural experiment in Switzerland where cutoff dates vary across time and regions and analyze data from 2012-2023. Being younger relative to classmates increases the likelihood of special needs placement and grade retention in early elementary school. These effects are driven by relative, not absolute, SSA and persist for up to eight years, influencing secondary school track placement. Children of less educated parents are more affected, suggesting SSA policies may reinforce educational inequality. |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0244 |