Intergenerational correlations in educational attainment: Birth order and family size effects using Canadian data

We exploit the 1986, 1994, and 2001 waves of the Canadian general social surveys in order to estimate intergenerational correlations in education. The use of these specific data is important because of available information on the final educational attainment of survey respondents and both parents, as well as family size and birth order. OLS estimates reveal that: (1) relying exclusively on maternal schooling to capture the effects of parental education results in coefficient estimates that are biased upwards; (2) children born to parents with some post-secondary schooling are more likely to attain similar education levels than children born to parents with lower educational accomplishment; (3) in most specifications coefficient estimates of paternal schooling are greater in magnitude than maternal accomplishment; and finally, (4) coefficient estimates of the number of siblings are consistently negative and significant even after the inclusion of birth order effects, implying that a larger family is correlated with a reduced likelihood of post-secondary education.     

Education,work and earnings of Peruvian women

This study describes trends in educational attainment among women in Peru, and examines the determinants of educational attainment, labor force participation and employment, and earnings. Data were obtained from the Peruvian Living Standards Survey among a sample of 5644 women aged 20-59 years. Findings indicate that parents' educational variables had a positive and statistically significant relationship with the educational attainment of their daughters. The impact declined over time from older to younger cohorts. School reforms improved women's access to education. Education became more universal and compulsory over time. Daughters of mothers with white collar occupations had higher levels of schooling than farmers' daughters. The effects of fathers' education was larger. There was a wider gap between farmers and nonfarmers. Textbooks, teachers, and number of grades offered were the only primary school inputs that showed any clear cohort trend in their effect on years of schooling. As primary schools became more available, textbooks had a greater impact on school attainment. The impact of textbooks was larger for women than for men. The number of grades offered had a large positive effect which increased across cohorts from older to younger. Findings suggest weak effects of school reforms on women's likelihood of participating in the paid or unpaid labor force. Years of schooling had a very small and negative effect on total labor force participation. Woman's paid employment was influenced by age, education and training, household characteristics, and family's unearned income. Educational attainment had a small positive effect on participation in paid employment for younger women and no effect for older women. The average rate of return in paid employment to primary education was about 12%. Primary education had the highest rate of return. The return to job tenure was higher for younger women.     

Mothers,fathers and daughters: Intergenerational transmission of education in Greece

This study explores the role of intergenerational mobility in the educational attainments of Greek women. We use data from the most recent Greek Household Budget Survey and the last three Greek censuses (1981, 1991 and 2001). For analytical and estimation purposes we utilize mobility indicators, regression analysis, decomposition techniques and conventional discrete choice models. Overall, our results point to the presence of substantial educational mobility across generations over the last 30 years. However, daughters’ educational attainment still depends, albeit to a lesser extent, on parental education and especially on mothers’ education. To address the remaining inequalities, policy needs to target families with poor parental educational and income backgrounds.     

Educational mobility across generations of formally and informally employed: Evidence from Pakistan

Poverty persists across generations through the transmission of informal employment from one generation to the next. Education and earnings are considered important factors that transmit informal employment across generations. Considering education as one of the transmission mechanisms of sectoral employment and poverty, no studies have yet conducted any comparative analysis of educational persistence across generations of formally and informally employed parents. Therefore, the present study estimates the intergenerational persistence of education by considering the nature of parents’ employment through intergenerational elasticity and intergenerational correlation approaches of mobility measurement. Results show that intergenerational persistence is higher at the lower levels of education when the father is informally employed. On the contrary, when the father is formally employed, this persistence is higher at the higher levels of education. This result implies that labour market reforms are essential along with educational reforms to break this intergenerational persistence.     

From mother to daughter: changes in intergenerational educational and occupational mobility in Germany

Recent decades have seen a dramatic expansion in the educational attainment and occupational opportunities of German women. Both the educational and occupational positions of the mothers and those of their daughters are continuously changing across cohorts. Our study aims to detect the probability of daughters to experience maternal-line intergenerational educational and occupational mobility. Using new data from the National Educational Panel Study of adult cohorts, we analyse successive cohorts of German women born between 1944 and 1984. We demonstrate that the relation between mothers’ and daughters’ educational and occupational career has changed over time. Maternal-line female mobility has decreased over cohorts. Our results also reveal that the relationship between educational careers and female job mobility has changed. The tertiary level of education has become more relevant across cohorts in preventing downward intergenerational mobility and it has become a prerequisite for taking part in the completion for upward intergenerational mobility.     

A private matter? Religious education and democracy in Indonesia and Israel

The article examines state-supported religious education and its consequences for civic attitudes in Indonesia and Israel, two democracies that grant religion a prominent place in the public sphere, particularly in education. The comparison reveals that while in Indonesia the state was able to gradually introduce a secular curriculum in religious schools and establish an accreditation system by which it could exert influence on the way religion is taught, in Israel, by contrast, state-funded religious schools over time became increasingly opposed to a mandatory ‘core curriculum’ of general studies. The comparison further suggests that in Indonesia the inclusion of a secular curriculum in religious schools in the 1970s should be seen as one of the factors promoting the production and dissemination of ‘rationalist approaches to religion’ and brought religious actors on board of democratisation, while in Israel the exclusion of a secular curriculum from religious schooling has undermined civic commitments among ultra-Orthodox Jewish citizens and as such weakened Israeli democracy. The article is based on public opinion data, data from the Ministries of Religion and Education, and court decisions in both countries.     

Skill premia and intergenerational education mobility: The French case

In the case of France, we analyse the changes in the wage value of each education level and the impact of parents’ education and income upon the education attainment of children, sons and daughters. We find a critical decline in the skill premium of the Baccalauréat (‘bac’) in relation to the lowest educational level, and an increase in the skill premia of higher education degrees in relation to the bac, which is however not large enough to erase the decrease in all the skill premia relative to the lowest education. We also find a significant rise in the impact of family backgrounds upon education from 1993 to 2003, i.e., a decrease in intergenerational education mobility, which primarily derives from higher impact of parental incomes. Finally, the gender wage gap is particularly large for the lowest and the highest education degrees, and intergenerational persistence is greater for sons than for daughters.     

Does Developmental Education Help? Findings from the Academic Performance of Adult Undergraduate Students in Community Colleges

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the association between participating in developmental education and degree attainment within 6 years for adults (age 24 and older) who entered one of 10 Ohio public community or technical colleges for the first time in 2002–2013. Degree attainment is modeled using annual data on course enrollment and completion measures. Results from both a logistic regression (with fixed effects) and propensity score matching provide different estimates of the impact of developmental education on degree attainment. The study identifies a range of intermediate educational characteristics such as credit completion and persistence that are associated with final degree completion. Based on the results of this study, educational institutions that provide adult developmental education need to design specific educational interventions that will address the barriers adult undergraduates face.     

The effect of Vietnam-era conscription and genetic potential for educational attainment on schooling outcomes

This study examines whether draft lottery estimates of the causal effects of Vietnam-era military service on schooling vary by an individual's genetic propensity toward educational attainment. To capture the complex genetic architecture that underlies the bio-developmental pathways, behavioral traits and evoked environments associated with educational attainment, we construct polygenic scores (PGS) for respondents in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) that aggregate thousands of individual loci across the human genome and weight them by effect sizes derived from a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of years of education. Our findings suggest veterans with below average PGSs for educational attainment may have completed fewer years of schooling than comparable non-veterans. On the other hand, we do not find any difference in the educational attainment of veterans and non-veterans with above average PGSs. Results indicate that public policies and exogenous environments may induce heterogeneous treatment effects by genetic disposition.     

Why Brazil fell behind in college education?

Brazil fell behind in higher education attainment for the cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s. We jointly model educational choices, labor force participation and wages, and compute the average, marginal and internal rate of returns to schooling after controlling for changes in ability composition at all levels of education. We find very high returns to college, which indicate that the disappointing trend in higher education could reflect binding credit constraints, psychic costs or uncertainty about future earnings gains from schooling.     

An analysis of education inequality in China

This article analyzes both the current situation regarding education inequality in China, and its formation mechanisms. Policies promoting education have lead to remarkable progress in educational attainment, and also effectively decreased educational inequality. However, substantial inequalities in educational attainment remain, even though sustainable progress has been realized. Decomposition results using the Gini coefficient and Shapley value approach based on regression analysis indicate that the greatest contributing factors to educational inequality involve the urban–rural and social stratification divisions. Moreover, the household register system which divides city and country, as well as increasing income inequality is deepening institutional barriers and stratum differentiation. Though gender and regional gaps have been reduced significantly, the population residing in economically disadvantaged areas, especially females, still warrants social concern. In addition, age related decomposition results indicate that increasing educational attainment for the young plays a key role in reducing education inequality. At last, we argue that more educational investment should be allocated to disadvantaged groups and lower income groups; especially eliminating some institutional barriers such as the hukou system, unequal distribution of good quality educational resources, and so on.     

对中国劳动力市场中教育促进劳动生产率作用的实证检验

在中国特定的文化以及制度环境中，教育的个人收益率所反映的教育与收入的关系究竟来自社会对教育的信号作用的认同，还是代表了教育确实对提高劳动生产率产生的贡献?教育的生产性功能和筛选功能究竟是在多大程度上发挥作用的?随着市场经济的不断完善，教育的生产性功能与信息性功能是否会有变化?变化的趋势又如何?本文通过将中国劳动力市场中不同部门、不同地域的教育收益率进行对比，评估中国劳动力市场中教育的生产促进和筛选作用。同时通过对比不同时点进入劳动力市场的劳动者的教育收益率，验证教育的信息性功能与生产性功能变化的趋势，并从侧面检验中国劳动力市场的市场化进程。     

Does education foster trust? Evidence from compulsory schooling reform in the UK

Although many studies document that education and trust are positively correlated, few studies examine whether this correlation represents a causal effect. This paper fills in the gap with data from the British Social Attitudes Survey. Firstly, using the OLS method, this paper finds that education and the three measures of trust—trust in people, trust in politicians, and trust in government—are all positively and significantly correlated. Secondly, to examine whether this correlation represents a causal effect, this paper exploits exogenous variation in educational attainment induced by the compulsory schooling reform in 1972. The regression discontinuity estimates suggest that the effects of education on the three measures of trust are all small and statistically insignificant. The findings imply that the OLS estimates may suffer from omitted variable bias and the effects of education on trust may be small.     

Earnings returns to the British education expansion

We study the effects of the large expansion in British educational attainment that took place for cohorts born between 1970 and 1975. Using the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we find that the expansion caused men to increase education by about a year on average and gain about 8% higher wages; women obtained a slightly greater increase in education and a similar increase in wages. Clearly, there was a sizeable gain from being born late enough to take advantage of the greater educational opportunities offered by the expansion. Treating the expansion as an exogenous increase in educational attainment, we obtain instrumental variables estimates of returns to schooling of about 6% for both men and women.     

Expansion and social selection in education in England and Scotland

This paper examines trends in social class inequalities in young people’s educational attainment and HE entry between the mid‐1980s and the end of the 1990s in England and Scotland. Using time‐series data derived from the Scottish School Leavers Surveys and the England (and Wales) Youth Cohort Study, changes in both absolute and relative social class differences within and across the two countries were analysed through the use of a series of ordered logits. The results show that Scotland has higher educational attainment rates but also higher social class inequalities than England. Moreover, while in England social class inequalities at upper‐secondary and tertiary level have declined over time, in Scotland no evidence of such trend has been found. The conclusions highlight that possible explanations for these patterns reside in the different features of the two education systems and in the remarkable educational success of the Scottish middle class.     

Cohort changes in the transition from school to work: Evidence from three NLS surveys

This study examines the changes in the school-to-work transition of young adults in the United States over the latter part of the twentieth century. Their transition is portrayed using data from National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women, Young Men, and Youth 1979. In general, we find that indicators of educational attainment, working while in school and non-school related work increased across cohorts for almost all racial/ethnic and gender groups. This was especially true for young women. Furthermore, various indicators of personal and family backgrounds changed in ways consistent with an improvement across cohorts in the preparation of young men and women for their attainment of schooling and work experience and their success in the labor market. The one exception to this general picture of improvement across cohorts was Hispanic men, who experienced a notable decline in educational attainment and in a variety of personal and family background characteristics. With respect to hourly wage rates, we find that wages over the ages 16 through 27 declined across cohorts. However, the rate of growth of wages with age, particularly over adult ages, increased across cohorts, except Hispanic men. Our findings highlight the need for accounting for the endogeneity and selectivity of early skill acquisition.     

经济增长、教育扩展与收入分配——两个“倒U”假说的检验

改革开放以来,中国经济高速增长,教育事业也得到了迅速扩展。而与此同时,居民的收入分配差距也开始逐年拉大。梳理经济增长、教育扩展与收入分配三者关系并讨论中国居民收入分配的变化规律,可以更好地制定收入分配政策。通过对两个"倒U"假说的实证检验发现:经济增长与收入分配存在着"倒U"关系,中国的收入差距总体上是逐年扩大的,但2002年以来出现了一些缓解的趋势;教育扩展与收入分配的"倒U"关系没有得到充分验证,尽管平均受教育年限和平均受教育年限平方的估计系数是一正一负的,但在统计上不显著。相关分析发现,经济增长与教育扩展之间具有高度的一致性,二者对收入分配的影响也是相似的,这可以为两个"倒U"假设的一致性提供解释。目前我国平均受教育年限已经处于"倒U"曲线的拐点附近,对政府而言,继续关注民生问题,优先发展教育事业将是缩小收入分配差距的有效公共政策。     

Gains from female education in rural Bangladesh: A multidimensional approach

Despite progress toward gender equality in education in Bangladesh, its female labor force participation (FLFP) rate has been stagnant relative to that of men, especially in marginal rural areas. To identify the overall benefit of schooling investment in women in rural Bangladesh, we examine the impact of female educational attainment on not only FLFP but also gains from marriage and household welfare. Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity design where plausibly exogenous variation in school enrollment is created by the nationwide stipend program for women, we find moderate impacts of female education on FLFP, while female with higher education are more likely to marry more educated husbands who generate higher household income, particularly from non-farm activities. The results also show the significantly positive impacts of women’s education on sanitation control and children’s health. These findings indicate that female schooling enhances women’s role and well-being through marriage and household activities rather than their labor market activities.     

Do children spend too much time in schools? Evidence from a longer school year in Indonesia

I examine the effects of a longer school year in Indonesia on grade repetition, educational attainment, employability, and earnings. I exploit an arbitrary rule that assigned students to a longer school year in Indonesia in 1978–1979, which fits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. I find the longer school year decreases the probability of grade repetition and increases educational attainment; it also increases the probability of working in formal sectors and wages later in life. These results suggest the length of school years in Indonesia is not too long.     

Expanding notions of social reproduction: Grandparents’ educational attainment and grandchildren's cognitive skills

Inherited privilege and status remain powerful factors in the distribution of opportunity in American life. These transfers of socioeconomic resources across generations are facilitated by the links between adult educational attainment and children's cognitive skills. Our current study expands the notion of social reproduction beyond this narrow two-generation approach to investigate the links between grandparents’ educational attainment and their grandchildren's academic abilities. Using a nationally representative sample of over 13,000 children who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), we find that familial advantages in human capital persist over time and that these advantages are associated with improved cognitive outcomes among later generations. Even after controlling for a wide array of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, young children with college-educated grandparents possess stronger literacy and mathematics skills at the start of formal schooling. Propensity score approaches, which address concerns regarding the endogeneity inherent in the topic, yield similar results, suggesting the robustness of our findings.