Three approaches to modeling the relationship among durable goods, academic achievement, and school attendance in Colombia1

Abstract

In comparison to research on assets and their impact on school performance, less research has been devoted to household assets. This article studies the relationship among durable goods, academic achievement, and school attendance in Colombia. Durable goods are approximated through three different methodological approaches: inventory, attributional, and index approaches. Data come from the 2017 SABER test, a nationwide examination that assesses reading and math skills, for fifth- and ninth-grade students, (N = 621,218). Students with complete durable goods information (N = 364,436) were included. Multilevel modeling was used to test the effects of durable goods on academic achievement and school attendance. The results suggest that while the index approach provides a broad understanding of how durable goods relate to school performance, the inventory and the attributional approaches show that different types of durable goods have differential effects on educational outcomes. The index approach illustrates that the possession of durable goods is positively associated with academic achievement and school attendance. The inventory and the attributional approaches show that washing machines, computers, and internet access are positively related to academic achievement and school attendance. In contrast, TVs, video games, and cars are negatively related to school performance. This research added to the literature by using different methodological approaches to operationalize durable goods, and by expanding the geographic scope to Latin America. Findings from this study may contribute to reassessing current measures of multidimensional poverty in Colombia to include durable goods.