| By: |
Jerrim, John (Institute of Education, University of London);
Micklewright, John (Institute of Education, University of London) |
| Abstract: |
The international surveys of pupil achievement – PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS – have
been widely used to compare socioeconomic gradients in children's cognitive
abilities across countries. Socioeconomic status is typically measured drawing
on children's reports of family or home characteristics rather than
information provided by their parents. There is a well established literature
based on other survey sources on the measurement error that may result from
child reports. But there has been very little work on the implications for the
estimation of socioeconomic gradients in test scores in the international
surveys, and especially their variation across countries. We investigate this
issue drawing on data from PISA and PIRLS, focusing on three socioeconomic
indicators for which both child and parental reports are present for some
countries: father's occupation, parental education, and the number of books in
the family home. Our results suggest that children's reports of their father's
occupation provide a reliable basis on which to base comparisons across
countries in socioeconomic gradients in reading test scores. The same is not
true, however, for children's reports of the number of books in the home – a
measure commonly used – while results for parental education are rather mixed. |
| Keywords: |
educational inequality, socioeconomic status, measurement error, international comparisons, PISA, PIRLS |
| JEL: |
C21 C81 I24 |
| Date: |
2014–08 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8392&r=neu |