Trust and schooling in the United States

I investigate the effects of trust on human capital measured as average years of schooling in U.S. states using data from the 1980s and the 1990s. I find robust evidence that an increase in trust increases schooling across U.S. states. According the results of the seemingly unrelated regression estimation, a 25 percentage point increase in Trust increases the average years of schooling by approximately 1.5 months. This is not insignificant since more than $5000 increase in per capita income (in 2000 prices) is needed to have the same effect on schooling.     

The impact of child labor on schooling outcomes in Nicaragua

Child labor is considered a key obstacle to reaching the international commitments of Education For All. However, the empirical evidence on the effects of child labor on educational attainments is mostly limited to static measurements. This paper assesses the consequences of child labor on schooling outcomes over time by employing a three-year longitudinal household data set from Nicaragua. The potential endogeneity of past child labor and school outcomes is addressed through instrumental variables. The time a child dedicates to work is found to have harmful consequences on subsequent educational achievements, even after controlling for previous human capital accumulation and other factors. In particular, working over three hours a day is associated with school failure in the medium term. A distinction by type of work shows that time spent in market production has larger negative effects on school outcomes than time spent performing household chores.     

Migration,remittances and educational outcomes: The case of Haiti

This paper empirically investigates how migration and the receipt of remittances affect educational outcomes in Haiti. Based on a theoretical approach it tries to disentangle the effects of both phenomena that have mostly been jointly modeled in previous literature. The results suggest that remittances play an important role for poor households in alleviating budget constraints. Household wealth, captured via an asset index, is found to have a significant impact on education as well, supporting the idea that budget constraints play a crucial role in schooling decisions in Haiti.     

Non-formal basic education as a development priority: Evidence from Nicaragua

Almost 900m adolescents and adults are illiterate in the developing world, yet most policy discussions focus on the educational circumstances of primary aged children. As a result non-formal educational programs for adolescents and adults are given very little support, and this group is virtually ignored in international agreements such as the millennium declaration. This article presents the first serious attempt at evaluating the impact of a non-formal education program. Results show significant learning achievement over the academic year, as well as strong development impacts of the program in non-learning dimensions of participants’ lives. These positive impacts, plus the significantly lower unit costs and self-targeted nature of the program provide strong evidence that this type of program can be an important part of the poverty reduction and human capital enhancement strategy of developing countries with large illiterate adult populations.     

Are measured school effects just sorting?: Causality and correlation in the National Education Longitudinal Survey

Youth who share a school and neighborhood often show similar levels of academic achievement, but some studies find all or most of this correlation is due to sorting (not causation). We analyze the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) in three ways to decompose sorting versus causality: We first control for much richer measures of family background than other analysts have used. We next use characteristics of the students’ future high school as an instrument for family background (as future high school quality is correlated with unobserved family background but cannot cause junior high test scores). Finally, we use regression and semi-nonparametric matching methods to look at changes in test score when youth change schools. The results create a collage of evidence that a significant fraction of the correlation is causal.     

Cognitive skills among children in Senegal: Disentangling the roles of schooling and family background

We use unique data to estimate the determinants of cognitive ability among 14–17-year olds in Senegal. Unlike standard school-based samples, tests were administered to current students as well as to children no longer – or never – enrolled. Years of schooling strongly affects cognitive skills, but conditional on years of school, parental education and household wealth, as well as local public school quality, have surprisingly modest effects on test performance. Instead, family background primarily affects skills indirectly through its impacts on years of schooling. Therefore closing the schooling gaps between poor and wealthy children will also close most of the gap in cognitive skills between these groups.     

What will I be when I grow up? An analysis of childhood expectations and career outcomes

In this paper, we utilise the British National Child Development Study to explore the determinants of career expectations formed at the age of 16. We analyse the influence of careers advice and resources at school on career expectations as well as the influence of education. In addition, we explore the accuracy of occupational expectations as compared to the occupation that the respondents subsequently become employed in. Throughout our findings, human capital and gender play a pivotal role in explaining career expectations as well as explaining the accuracy of the occupational forecast. Interestingly, the level of school resources available for careers guidance in terms of the number of teachers who are qualified to give careers advice and the amount of specific careers guidance training received by these teachers both have relatively small effects upon career expectations.     

Expanding schooling opportunities for 4-year-olds

We use a novel quasi-experimental strategy to estimate the effect of expanding early schooling enrollment possibilities on early achievement. It exploits two features of the school system in The Netherlands. The first is rolling admissions; children are allowed to start school immediately after their 4th birthday instead of at the beginning of the school year. The second is that children having their birthday before, during and after the summer holiday are placed in the same class. These features generate sufficient exogenous variation in children’s enrollment opportunities to identify its effects on test scores. Making available one additional month of time in school increases language scores of disadvantaged pupils by 6 percent of a standard deviation and their math scores by 5 percent of a standard deviation. For non-disadvantaged pupils we find no effect.     

The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the role of race,socioeconomic status,and gender in college admissions

This paper contributes to research on affirmative action by examining issues of equity in the context of racial quotas in Brazil. We study the experience of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. Based on university admissions data and a student survey conducted by the authors, we find evidence that race, socioeconomic status, and gender were considerable barriers to college attendance and achievement. For example, first-difference regressions involving pairs of siblings indicate that black identity and gender had a negative effect on entrance exam scores. Moreover, we compare displaced and displacing applicants and find that racial quotas helped promote equity to some extent. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of redistribution were highly limited, and the vast majority of Brazilians had little chance of attending college, suggesting that more still needs to be done.     

The role of social trust in reducing long-term truancy and forming human capital in Japan

This paper attempts to examine how social trust influences human capital formation using prefectural level data in Japan. To this end, I constructed a proxy for social trust, based on the Japanese General Social Surveys. After controlling for socioeconomic factors, I found that social trust plays an important role in reducing the rate of long-term truancy in primary and junior high school. Results suggest that social trust improves educational quality.     

The medium term schooling and health effects of low birth weight: Evidence from siblings

Research has shown that low birth weight is linked to infant mortality as well as longer term outcomes. This paper examines the medium term outcomes that may link low birth weight to adult disadvantage using a national longitudinal sample with a large sample of siblings (Add Health). Results show strong effects on several educational outcomes, including early grade repetition, receipt of special education services, and reports of a learning disability. Results for longer term outcomes are suggestive, though less robust and small in magnitude. Overall, the results suggest that medium term educational disadvantages associated with low birth weight are not driven by family level unobservables and do not accumulate into large long-term disadvantage.     

Determinants of schooling for boys and girls in Nigeria under a policy of free primary education

This paper adds a measure of school costs to the model of determinants of schooling. Costs are estimated with controls for selection into school and the possibility of receiving free primary education (FPE). Controlling for costs, household wealth has a large, positive effect on primary school attendance with greater income elasticity for girls than boys. Girls’ attendance also depends on opportunity costs generated by providing child care for younger siblings and living on a family farm. Policies that increase household resources and reduce opportunity costs are recommended to complement free primary education.     

The effect of social programs and exposure to professionals on the educational aspirations of the poor

Investment in human capital is an important tool for reducing poverty. However, the poor may lack the capacity to aspire, which often results in underinvestment in their children's education. This paper studies the effect of a social program on the educational aspirations poor parents have for their children, and explores the role of exposure to educated professionals as a possible channel for increasing these aspirations. First, using differences-in-differences, we show that the Mexican antipoverty program PROGRESA raises the educational aspirations of beneficiary parents for their children of a third of a school year. Then, exploiting PROGRESA's mandated differential exposure to professionals, using triple differences, we find evidence suggesting that educational aspirations for children from high-exposure households are almost half of a school year higher six months after the start of the program. Finally, we show that there is a positive correlation between parental aspirations and children's educational attainment.     

Poisoning the mind: Arsenic contamination of drinking water wells and children's educational achievement in rural Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Prolonged drinking of such water risks development of diseases and therefore has implications for children's cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenic contamination of tubewells, the primary source of drinking water at home, on the learning outcome of school-going children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative data on secondary school children. We unambiguously find a negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics scores and arsenic-contaminated drinking tubewells at home, net of the child's socio-economic status, parental background and school specific unobserved correlates of learning. Similar correlations are found for an alternative measure of student achievement and subjective well-being (i.e. self-reported measure of life satisfaction), of the student. We conclude by discussing the policy implication of our findings in the context of the current debate over the adverse effect of arsenic poisoning on children.     

Do bans on affirmative action hurt minority students? Evidence from the Texas Top 10% Plan

In light of the recent bans on affirmative action in higher education, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of alternative admissions policies on the persistence and college completion of minority students. I find that the change from affirmative action to the Top 10% Plan in Texas decreased both retention and graduation rates of lower-ranked minority students. Results show that both fall-to-fall freshmen retention and six-year college graduation of second-decile minority students decreased, respectively, by 2.4 and 3.3 percentage points. The effect of the change in admissions policy was slightly larger for minority students in the third and lower deciles: fall-to-fall freshmen retention and six-year college graduation decreased, respectively, by 4.9 and 4.2 percentage points. Moreover, I find no evidence in support of the minority “mismatch” hypothesis. These results suggest that most of the increase in the graduation gap between minorities and non-minorities in Texas, a staggering 90%, was driven by the elimination of affirmative action in the 1990s.     

Educational progression of second-generation immigrants and immigrant children

This paper provides important new insights into the reasons for the observed gap in educational attainment between children of immigrants and natives in Denmark using a dynamic discrete model of educational choices to determine at what stages of their educational careers children of immigrants face barriers to educational progression and how background characteristics affect educational choices at different points in the educational system. The main findings of the paper are that dropout rates from vocational upper secondary education are much higher among children of immigrants and that strengthening family characteristics reduces the dropout rates. However, behavioral differences and/or differences in constraints and institutional factors are also important barriers and thus determinants of the observed educational gaps as is age at immigration.