| By: |
Tuomas Pekkarinen (Uppsala University and IZA Bonn);
Roope Uusitalo (Labour Institute for Economic Research, Helsinki);
Sari Pekkala (Government Institute for Economic Research, Helsinki) |
| Abstract: |
Many authors have recently suggested that the heterogeneity in the quality of
early education may be one of the key mechanisms underlying the
intergenerational persistence of earnings. This paper estimates the effect of
a major educational reform on the intergenerational income mobility in
Finland. The Finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972-1977 significantly
reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary
education. The reform shifted the tracking age in secondary education from age
10 to 16 and imposed a uniform academic curriculum on entire cohorts until the
end of lower secondary school. We estimate the effect of the reform on the
correlation between son’s earnings in 2000 and father’s average earnings
during 1970-1990 using a representative sample of males born during 1960-1966.
The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach and
exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across
municipalities during a six-year period. The results indicate that the reform
reduced the intergenerational income correlation by seven percentage points. |
| Keywords: |
generational mobility, education, comprehensive school reform |
| JEL: |
D31 J62 I20 |
| Date: |
2006–07 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2204&r=hrm |