Compulsory Schooling Laws Research Articles

The effect of degree attainment on arrests: Evidence from a randomized social experiment

We examine the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior using random assignment into Job Corps (JC)—the United States’ largest education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth—as a source of exogenous variability in educational attainment. We allow such random assignment to violate the exclusion restriction when used as an instrument by employing nonparametric bounds. The attainment of a degree is estimated to reduce arrest rates by at most 11.8 percentage points (about 32.6%). We also find suggestive evidence that the effects may be larger for males relative to females, and larger for black males relative to white males. Remarkably, our 95% confidence intervals on the causal effect of education on arrests are very similar to those from studies exploiting changes in compulsory schooling laws as an instrumental variable (e.g., Lochner and Moretti, 2004), despite our use of a different source of exogenous variation, methodology, and sample.

School Entry, Compulsory Schooling, and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Michigan

Extant research on school entry and compulsory schooling laws finds that these policies increase the high school graduation rate of relatively younger students, but weaken their academic performance in early grades. In this paper, we explore the evolution of postsecondary impacts of the interaction of school entry and compulsory schooling laws in Michigan. We employ a regression-discontinuity (RD) design using longitudinal administrative data to examine effects on high school performance, college enrollment, choice, and persistence. On average, we find that children eligible to start school at a relatively younger age are more likely to complete high school, but underperform while enrolled, compared to their counterparts eligible to start school at a relatively older age. In turn, these students are 2 percentage points more likely to first attend a two-year college, and enroll in fewer postsecondary semesters, relative to their older counterparts. We explore heterogeneity in these effects across subgroups of students defined by gender and poverty status. For example, we illustrate that the increase in the high school graduation rate of relatively younger students attributable to the combination of school entry and compulsory schooling laws is driven entirely by impacts on economically disadvantaged students.

The Effect of Degree Attainment on Arrests: Evidence from a Randomized Social Experiment

We examine the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior using random assignment into Job Corps (JC) – the United States' largest education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth – as a source of exogenous variability in educational attainment. We allow such random assignment to violate the exclusion restriction when used as an instrument by employing nonparametric bounds. The attainment of a degree is estimated to reduce arrest rates by at most 11.8 percentage points (about 32.6%).We also find suggestive evidence that the effects may be larger for males relative to females, and larger for black males relative to white males. Remarkably, our 95 percent confidence intervals on the causal effect of education on arrests are very similar to the corresponding confidence intervals on the same effect from studies exploiting changes in compulsory schooling laws as an instrumental variable in the estimation of the effect of education on arrest rates (e.g., Lochner and Moretti, 2004).

The Impact of Female Education on Teenage Fertility: Evidence from Turkey

Abstract This paper explores the causal relationship between female education and teenage fertility by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. Using variation in the exposure to the CSL across cohorts and variation across provinces by the intensity of additional classrooms constructed in the birth provinces as an instrumental variable, the results indicate that primary school completion reduces teenage fertility by 0.37 births and the incidence of teenage childbearing by around 28 percentage points. Exploring heterogeneous effects indicates that female education reduces teenage fertility more in provinces with lower population density and higher agricultural activity. This paper also disentangles intensive- and extensive-margin effects and explores various channels, such as postponing marriage and contraceptive use, linking education and fertility. Finally, this paper demonstrates that there are additional social benefits of education in terms of child health.

Instrumental variable approaches to identifying the causal effect of educational attainment on dementia risk

PurposeEducation is an established correlate of cognitive status in older adulthood, but whether expanding educational opportunities would improve cognitive functioning remains unclear given limitations of prior studies for causal inference. Therefore, we conducted instrumental variable (IV) analyses of the association between education and dementia risk, using for the first time in this area, genetic variants as instruments as well as state-level school policies. MethodsIV analyses in the Health and Retirement Study cohort (1998–2010) used two sets of instruments: (1) a genetic risk score constructed from three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; n = 7981); and (2) compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) and state school characteristics (term length, student teacher ratios, and expenditures; n = 10,955). ResultsUsing the genetic risk score as an IV, there was a 1.1% reduction in dementia risk per year of schooling (95% confidence interval, −2.4 to 0.02). Leveraging compulsory schooling laws and state school characteristics as IVs, there was a substantially larger protective effect (−9.5%; 95% confidence interval, −14.8 to −4.2). Analyses evaluating the plausibility of the IV assumptions indicated estimates derived from analyses relying on CSLs provide the best estimates of the causal effect of education. ConclusionsIV analyses suggest education is protective against risk of dementia in older adulthood.

Crime, compulsory schooling laws and education

Do compulsory schooling laws reduce crime? Previous evidence for the US from the 1960s and 1970s suggests they do, primarily working through their effect on educational attainment to generate a causal impact on crime. In this paper, we consider whether more recent experience replicates this. There are two key findings. First, there is a strong and consistent negative effect on crime from stricter compulsory schooling laws. Second, there is a weaker and sometimes non-existent link between such laws and educational attainment. As a result, credible causal estimates of the education–crime relationship cannot in general be identified for the more recent period, though they can for some groups with lower education levels (in particular, for blacks).

The effect of early-life education on later-life mortality

Many studies link cross-state variation in compulsory schooling laws to early-life educational attainment, thereby providing a plausible way to investigate the causal impact of education on various lifetime outcomes. We use this strategy to estimate the effect of education on older-age mortality of individuals born in the early twentieth century U.S. Our key innovation is to combine U.S. Census data and the complete Vital Statistics records to form precise mortality estimates by sex, birth cohort, and birth state. In turn we find that virtually all of the variation in these mortality rates is captured by cohort effects and state effects alone, making it impossible to reliably tease out any additional impact due to changing educational attainment induced by state-level changes in compulsory schooling.

Did the Americanization Movement Succeed? An Evaluation of the Effect of English-Only and Compulsory Schooling Laws on Immigrants

We provide the first estimates of the effect of statutes requiring English as the language of instruction and compulsory schooling laws on the school enrollment, work, literacy, and English fluency of immigrant children during the Americanization period (1910–1930). English-only statutes moderately increased the literacy of certain foreign-born children, particularly those living in cities or whose parents were not fluent in English. However, these laws had no impact on immigrants' eventual labor market outcomes or measures of social integration (from 1940 census and WWII enlistment records). Only laws regulating the age when children could work significantly affected immigrant outcomes. (JEL I21, I26, I28, J13, J15, N31, N32)

The causal effect of schooling on smoking behavior

This paper, using data for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, examines the hypothesis that there is a causal relationship between schooling and cigarette smoking. Compulsory schooling laws are exploited to isolate for causation. Cohorts who were teenagers before and after the health consequences of smoking were widely known are used to compare the effects of additional schooling in the presence and absence of widespread exposure to health-related information. Although the results for Great Britain indicate no causal role for education either before or after the consequences of smoking for health were widely known, the results for Northern Ireland suggest that, at least among men, schooling affected smoking decisions prior to the public dissemination of knowledge on the dangers of smoking for health.

Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Educational Assortative Mating: The Importance of Context.

Modernization theory predicts that rising education should increase assortative mating by education and decrease sorting by race. Recent research suggests that effects of educational expansion depend on contextual factors, such as economic development. Using log-linear and log-multiplicative models of male household heads ages 36 to 75 in the 1940 U.S. census data--the first U.S. census with educational attainment information--I investigate how educational assortative mating changed with one instance of educational expansion: early U.S. compulsory school attendance laws. To improve on existing research and distinguish effects of expansion from changes due to particular years or cohorts, I capitalize on state variation in the timing of these compulsory laws (ranging from 1852 to 1918). Aggregate results suggest that compulsory laws had minimal impact on assortative mating. However, separate analyses by region (and supplemental analyses by race) reveal that assortative mating by education decreased with the laws in the South but increased in the North. Whether due to economic, legal, political, or other differences, results suggest that the implications of educational expansion for marital sorting depend on context. Contemporary implications are discussed in light of President Obama's 2012 suggested extension of compulsory schooling to age 18.

The role of maternal education in child health: Evidence from a compulsory schooling law

This paper explores the effect of maternal education on child health and the channels in which education operates by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. In order to account for the endogeneity of education, variation across cohorts induced by the timing of the CSL and variation across provinces by the intensity of additional classrooms constructed in the mother’s birth provinces is used as an instrumental variable. The results indicate that mother’s primary school completion improves infant health, as measured by very low birth weight, and child health, as measured by height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores, even after controlling for many potential confounding factors. This paper also demonstrates that maternal education leads to earlier preventive care initiation, reduces smoking, reduces fertility, and increases age at first birth.

Compulsory schooling laws and school crime

Extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment, well-being, civic involvement, and labour market outcomes. However, at-risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety. The purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age (MDA) requirement above 16 increases crime committed within US public high schools. A difference-in-difference estimation exploits changes in state-level MDA laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not, while no effect on overall crime is identified when the MDA requirement is raised to 17. Furthermore, these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas. Coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the MDA requirement is raised to 18, only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is displaced to schools. Analysis by category of crime reveals schools incur more physical attacks, no change in illegal drug and property crimes, and fewer violent crimes in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18, while illegal drug crimes increase in states that raise their MDA requirement to 17.

The differential impact of compulsory schooling laws on school quality in the United States segregated South

In this paper, I estimate the differential effects of compulsory schooling laws on school quality between black and white schools in the United States segregated South. I employ state-level data on length of school terms and pupil–teacher ratios to examine these responses. Other literature has found that stricter compulsory schooling legislation failed to impact black students’ education levels in terms of years of schooling, while having a modest increase on white students’ years of schooling. I find that an increase in the age at which a child could receive a work permit led to a small increase in the term length in black schools relative to white schools. On the whole, however, the differential effects on school quality are small in scope and magnitude. This finding suggests that in the context I examine, changes in school quality are a minor issue when using compulsory schooling laws as an instrument for educational attainment or when estimating the overall impact of compulsory schooling laws on educational attainment.

Educational Expansion and Occupational Change: US Compulsory Schooling Laws and the Occupational Structure 1850–1930

During the US Industrial Revolution, educational expansion may have created skilled jobs through innovation and skill upgrading or reduced skilled jobs by mechanizing production. Such arguments contradict classic sociological work that treats education as a sorting mechanism, allocating individuals to fixed occupations. I capitalize on state differences in the timing of compulsory school attendance laws to ask whether raising the minimum level of schooling: (1) increased school attendance rate; or (2) shifted state occupational distributions away from agricultural toward skilled and non-manual occupation categories. Using state-level panel data constructed from 1850–1930 censuses and state-year fixed effects models, I find that compulsory laws significantly increased school attendance rates, particularly among lower-class children, and shifted the categorical distribution toward skilled and non-manual occupations. Thus, rather than deskilling through mechanization, raising the minimum level of education seems to have created skilled jobs and raised the occupational distribution through skill-biased technological change. Results suggest that education was not merely a sorting mechanism, supporting the importance of education as an institution even around the turn of the century.

Understanding the Effects of Education on Health: Evidence from China

Using a national representative sample in China from three largest on-going surveys, this study examines the effects of education on health among working-age population and explores the potential mechanisms. Using the exogenous variation in temporal and geographical impacts of Compulsory Schooling Laws (CSLs), it finds an additional year of schooling decreases 2-percentage points in reporting fair or poor health, 1-percentage points for underweight and 1.5-percentage points for smoking, and increases cognition by about 0.16 standard deviation. Further analysis also suggests that nutrition, income, cognition and peer effects are important channels in the education-health nexus, and all of these factors explain almost half of the education's impact. These suggest that CSLs have improved national health significantly in China and the findings help to explain the mixed findings in the literature.

Hidden Gains

Research on early compulsory schooling laws finds minimal effects on attendance but fails to investigate heterogeneous effects. Similarly, research proposes limited contexts in which expansion policies can increase equality but has difficulty separating policy and cohort effects. Capitalizing on within-country variation in timing of early compulsory laws, passed 1852 to 1918, I ask whether they improved equality of school attendance or educational attainment by class, nativity, and race. Based on census data, compulsory laws increased equality of attendance and attainment, particularly among young men in the North, where the laws reduced class and race gaps by over 20%. Early compulsory schooling laws provided “hidden gains,” missed in previous analyses, suggesting policies that raise minimum schooling can increase educational equality in certain contexts.

New evidence of the effects of education on health in the US: Compulsory schooling laws revisited

Estimating the effects of education on health and mortality has been the subject of intense debate and competing findings and summaries. The original Lleras-Muney (2005) methods utilizing state compulsory schooling laws as instrumental variables for completed education and US data to establish effects of education on mortality have been extended to several countries, with mixed and often null findings. However, additional US studies have lagged behind due to small samples and/or lack of mortality information in many available datasets. This paper uses a large, novel survey from the AARP on several hundred thousand respondents to present new evidence of the effects of education on a variety of health outcomes. Results suggest that education may have a role in improving several dimensions of health, such as self reports, cardiovascular outcomes, and weight outcomes. Other results appear underpowered, suggesting that further use of this methodology may require even larger, and potentially unattainable, sample sizes in the US.

Does more education lead to better health habits? Evidence from the school reforms in Australia

The current study provides new empirical evidence on the causal effect of education on health-related behaviors by exploiting historical changes in the compulsory schooling laws in Australia. Since World War II, Australian states increased the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15 in different years. Using differences in the laws regarding minimum school leaving age across different cohorts and across different states as a source of exogenous variation in education, we show that more education improves people's diets and their tendency to engage in more regular exercise and drinking moderately, but not necessarily their tendency to avoid smoking and to engage in more preventive health checks. The improvements in health behaviors are also reflected in the estimated positive effect of education on some health outcomes. Our results are robust to alternative measures of education and different estimation methods.

Smart Money? The Effect of Education on Financial Outcomes

Household financial decisions are important for household welfare, economic growth, and financial stability. Yet our understanding of the determinants of financial decision making is limited. Exploiting exogenous variation in state compulsory schooling laws in both standard and two-sample instrumental variable strategies, we show that education increases financial market participation, measured by investment income and equities ownership, while dramatically reducing the probability that an individual declares bankruptcy, experiences a foreclosure, or is delinquent on a loan. Further results and a simple calibration suggest that the result is driven by changes in savings or investment behavior, rather than simply increased labor earnings.

Compulsory Schooling Laws and Formation of Beliefs: Education, Religion and Superstition

We exploit information on compulsory schooling reforms in 11 European countries, implemented mostly in the 1960s and 70s, to identify the impact of education on religious adherence and religious practices. Using micro data from the European Social Survey, conducted in various years between 2002 and 2013, we find consistently large negative effects of schooling on self-reported religiosity, social religious acts (attending religious services), as well as solitary religious acts (the frequency of praying). We also use data from European Values Survey to apply the same empirical design to analyze the impact of schooling on superstitious beliefs. We find that more education, due to increased mandatory years of schooling, reduces individuals' propensity to believe in the power of lucky charms and the tendency to take into account horoscopes in daily life.