Final Educational Attainment Research Articles

The effect of the age at school entry on educational attainment and field of study: an analysis using the Spanish census

In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers. It is also well-established that this effect peaks at the initial stages of the educational career and wanes as students grow. However, it remains unclear whether or not the age at school entry affects final educational attainment. In this work, we use Spanish census data to assess whether individuals born right after the school-entry cutoff (January 1) are more likely to complete post-compulsory education, a university degree and post-graduate education. We also assess if the age at school entry affects the probability of completing education in a STEM field of study. Our findings indicate that males born after the cutoff accumulate more years of education than males born before that date, but are less likely to complete their education in a STEM field of study. Interestingly, the effect concentrates among the youngest and oldest students in each cohort, is less intense for higher levels of education and disappears among females.

The Long-Term Effects of Student Absence: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish individuals born in the 1930s. We find that elementary school absence significantly reduces contemporaneous academic performance, final educational attainment and labour income throughout the life cycle. The findings are consistent with a dynamic model of human capital formation, whereby absence causes small immediate learning losses, which cumulate to larger human capital losses over time and lead to worse labour market performance.

Change in Students’ Educational Expectations – A Meta-Analysis

Data from the U.S. and Canada indicate that students’ educational expectations are often unrealistically high. Thus, the present meta-analysis tested whether students tend to decrease, on average, their educational expectations from childhood to emerging adulthood. A systematic search in the electronic databases ERIC, PsycInfo, PSYNDEX, and Web of Science identified 91 longitudinal studies the results of which were integrated with multi-level meta-analysis. While expectations about the highest future educational degree showed very small declines per year (of g = -.02 standard deviation units), the mean yearly decline of expectations about future grades was estimated to be g = -.73. Moderator analysis found a decline in expectations about the final degree only in studies from the U.S. and Canada—countries with the highest gap between expectation and future educational attainment. In addition, change in expectations about the final degree varied by age, with the strongest decline being observed around the age of 20 years. We conclude that positive expectations about the final educational attainment often tend to persist over longer intervals probably due to lacking strong counter-evidence and because of indicating a desirable outcome.

Civil War, Famine and the Persistence of Human Capital: Evidence from Tajikistan

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and 1992–96 Tajik civil war resulted in huge human and economic losses. Nevertheless, contemporary data suggest the persistence of investments in human capital in the region most affected by famine and least favoured since the cessation of hostilities, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast. Famine-affected women have greater stature and final educational attainment, later ages at marriage and lower fertility than do those in the neighbouring border province, Khatlon. Educational interactions between adults and children under age six are much more frequent. The continued emphasis on human capital after economic collapse is consistent with a locational imperative for households to earn incomes outside of agriculture, and with a higher relative status of women in non-agrarian societies.

Caught by surprise: The adaptation of parental expectations after unexpected ability track placement

The study examines the adaptation of educational expectations. It focuses on the expectations that parents have of their children during the transition from primary to secondary school in Germany. During this transition, students are placed into different ability tracks. It is examined whether parents react to this information about their child's achievement by adjusting their educational expectations or whether their expectations are nonreactive to the achievement information conveyed by track placement. It is hypothesized that parents are more likely to adapt their expectations regarding final educational attainment if their child's track placement is not consistent with the expectations that they held before the track placement was known. Furthermore, SES differences in this adjustment process are expected as parents of different social status have different orientations towards achievement information. The study uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), Starting Cohort 2 and focuses on the years between the third grade of primary school and fifth grade, which is the first year of secondary school. This means that students and parents can be followed across the moment in the academic career at which track placement happens. Furthermore, the variations in the tracking decisions across the German federal states is used to examine how the adaptation of parents’ expectations is affected based on how much influence parents have on track placement. Two-way fixed effect models are employed to model the change of expectations between the two time points in the data. The results show that low-SES parents do adjust their expectations more strongly downward when their children receive a lower track placement than expected; however, high-SES parents maintain their high expectations even in light of such negative achievement information. High- and low-SES parents do not significantly differ in their expectation adjustment if their children's track placement is higher than their previous expectations.

Analysing Diversion Processes in German Secondary Education: School-Track Effects on Educational Aspirations

Educational aspirations can be regarded as a predictor of final educational attainment, rendering this construct highly relevant for analysing the development of educational inequalities in panel data settings. In the context of the German tracked secondary school system, we analysed school-track effects on the development of educational aspirations. Using data from five consecutive waves of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we selected a sample of high-performing students with initially high aspirations. Our results indicate that pupils in the nonacademic track or with a low social origin tend to lower their aspirations significantly more often than pupils in the academic track or pupils with a high social origin. With mediation analyses, we demonstrate that these differences can be attributed to learning environments at the school level. We also show that the downward adjustment of aspirations in the nonacademic track is less pronounced for students from highly educated families than for students from low-education family backgrounds.

Does tracking really affect labour-market outcomes in the long run? Estimating the long-term effects of secondary-school tracking in West Germany

This article aims to estimate to what extent track attendance in secondary education in Germany affects labour-market outcomes for individuals with similar starting conditions. We argue that track attendance creates path dependencies that lead to different positions in the occupational structure. We also investigate whether such effects vanish when we control for final educational attainment and whether they are moderated by social origin. We pooled the German Life History Study (GLHS 1964 and 1971) with the Adult Cohort of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC6), analysing the educational and employment histories for the cohorts born between 1964 and 1986 in West Germany. We condition on observables employing Covariate Balancing Propensity Score matching (CBPS). Since in both data sets information on pre-tracking ability is missing, we apply a method to approximate controlling for selection into school tracks, which makes use of GPA information at the end of first secondary schooling. Our results show that, on average, marginal students who were exposed to a lower track have lower International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI) scores and are less likely to enter the service class. As expected, when we condition on final educational attainment, the statistically significant differences disappear. We do not find complete support of moderation effects by social backgrounds as the evidence for compensatory advantage of students from privileged class background is confined to those in the lowest school track. We conclude that our data provide supports for path dependencies of track exposure.

Civil War, Famine and the Persistence of Human Capital: Evidence from Tajikistan

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and 1992-96 Tajik civil war resulted in huge human and economic losses. Nevertheless, contemporary data suggest the persistence of investments in human capital in the region most affected by famine and least favoured since the cessation of hostilities, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast. Famine-affected women have greater stature and final educational attainment, later ages at marriage and lower fertility than do those in the neighbouring border province, Khatlon. Educational interactions between adults and children under age six are much more frequent. The continued emphasis on human capital after economic collapse is consistent with a locational imperative for households to earn incomes outside of agriculture, and with a higher relative status of women in non-agrarian societies.

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

United States primary school closures during the 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected millions of children, with little understanding of the potential health outcomes associated with educational disruption. To estimate the potential years of life lost (YLL) associated with the COVID-19 pandemic conditioned on primary schools being closed or remaining open. This decision analytical model estimated the association between school closures and reduced educational attainment and the association between reduced educational attainment and life expectancy using publicly available data sources, including data for 2020 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Social Security Administration, and the US Census Bureau. Direct COVID-19 mortality and potential increases in mortality that might have resulted if school opening led to increased transmission of COVID-19 were also estimated. Years of life lost. A total of 24.2 million children aged 5 to 11 years attended public schools that were closed during the 2020 pandemic, losing a median of 54 (interquartile range, 48-62.5) days of instruction. Missed instruction was associated with a mean loss of 0.31 (95% credible interval [CI], 0.10-0.65) years of final educational attainment for boys and 0.21 (95% CI, 0.06-0.46) years for girls. Summed across the population, an estimated 5.53 million (95% CI, 1.88-10.80) YLL may be associated with school closures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 88 241 US deaths from COVID-19 through the end of May 2020, with an estimated 1.50 million (95% CI, 1.23-1.85 million) YLL as a result. Had schools remained open, 1.47 million (95% credible interval, 0.45-2.59) additional YLL could have been expected as a result, based on results of studies associating school closure with decreased pandemic spread. Comparing the full distributions of estimated YLL under both "schools open" and "schools closed" conditions, the analysis observed a 98.1% probability that school opening would have been associated with a lower total YLL than school closure. In this decision analytical model of years of life potentially lost under differing conditions of school closure, the analysis favored schools remaining open. Future decisions regarding school closures during the pandemic should consider the association between educational disruption and decreased expected lifespan and give greater weight to the potential outcomes of school closure on children's health.

Navigating Institutions: Parents’ Knowledge of the Educational System and Students’ Success in Education

AbstractThis study investigates whether families navigate educational institutions more successfully if they have a higher knowledge of the pathways in the educational system that are available to their children. We also study whether this kind of knowledge mediates secondary effects of social origin, i.e. differences in educational pathways once achievement differences between children are accounted for. The role of parents’ knowledge is consistent with various sociological theories concerning educational inequality. Knowledge can affect families’ ability to make rational choices for education but it can also be understood as a form of cultural capital. We use longitudinal student cohort data from the Netherlands combined with individual-level register data on educational attainment to study the importance of knowledge for short-term outcomes (up- and downward transitions in secondary education as well as track placement) and final educational attainment. Our results show that parents’ knowledge is a significant predictor of educational success net of parents’ education, socio-demographic characteristics, and demonstrated ability. If we apply a stricter test to the measure, however, we can see that knowledge matters for downward transitions and obtaining a tertiary degree but that the effect is negligible for upward transitions and track placement if other mechanisms such as cultural capital and aspirations are considered. Further, we conclude that knowledge matters especially for transitions in the educational system that require a move to a new and unknown school environment such as post-secondary or tertiary education. The study shows that knowledge is one useful avenue to investigate when we are confronted with the question why social disparities in educational decision-making arise.

Cognitive consequences of the timing of puberty

In this paper, we use British cohort data to study the degree to which children at different stages of pubertal development at age 11 and 16 differ in their cognitive and behavioral outcomes at age 16 as well as in their completed educational attainment and adult earnings. Controlling for age 7 cognitive skills, region of birth, father’s socioeconomic status and parents’ education, we show that boys’ late pubertal development is associated with lower levels of cognitive skills at 16, lower final educational attainment, and lower earnings in adulthood. For girls we find a similar negative relationship between late puberty and cognitive skills, but only imprecise relationships between the timing of puberty and adult outcomes. We fail to find evidence of strong associations with either motivation or problem behavior in adolescence for either gender, suggesting a more direct link between pubertal and cognitive development.

Policies, skills and earnings: how educational inequality affects earnings inequality

We study the impact of dispersions in education (both in student test scores and final educational attainment) on earnings inequality, in a country-cohort design. Neo-classical economic theory would predict a positive association between skill inequality (as measured in student test scores) and earnings inequality, while educational attainment inequality adds little on top of skills inequality. A sociological theory of social closure, however, argues that inequality in educational attainment is more important than skills inequality in the prediction of earnings inequality. Using educational policies as instruments, we find causal effects of skills inequality and educational attainment inequality, suggesting that a simple human capital model is insufficient to explain rising earnings inequalities. Nevertheless, skills inequality appeared a more important predictor of earnings inequality than educational attainment inequality. Some educational policy reforms (like public preschool provision or introducing standardized tests) led to reduced educational dispersions, and thereby reduced earnings inequality in adulthood.

The Timing of Puberty and Gender Differences in Educational Achievement

In this paper, we study the effect of the timing of puberty on educational achievement and examine to what extent the gender differences in the timing of puberty can explain gender differences in achievement. We use British cohort data that combine information on pubertal development with test scores, behavioral outcomes as well as final educational attainment and earnings. Controlling for age 7 cognitive skills and family background, we show that late pubertal development is associated with a slower rate of cognitive skill growth during adolescence. This disadvantage in cognitive development is also reflected in lower levels of educational attainment and earnings for late developed individuals. The number of late developing boys is however too small to explain more than a fraction of the gender gap in educational outcomes. Furthermore, we find no effects on self-discipline or other behavioral outcomes in adolescence, suggesting a mechanism wholly separate from other causes of the gender gap.

The Role of Parental Income Over the Life Cycle: A Comparison of Sweden and the UK

Research on intergenerational income mobility has shown stronger persistence between parental and offspring's income in the UK than in Sweden. We use similar data sets for the two countries to explore whether these cross-national differences show up already early in offspring's life in outcomes such as birth weight, grades at the end of compulsory school at age 16, height during adolescence, and final educational attainment. We do indeed find significant country differences in the association between parental income and these outcomes, and the associations are stronger in the UK than in Sweden. Therefore, we continue to investigate whether these differentials are large enough to account for a substantial part of the difference in intergenerational persistence estimates. We then conclude that the country differences in the intergenerational associations in birth weight and height are too weak to account for hardly any fraction of the UK-Sweden difference in intergenerational income mobility. For the more traditional human-capital variables grades and final education, however, our results suggest that the country differences can account for a substantial part of the difference in income persistence.

The role of attitudes and behaviours in explaining socio-economic differences in attainment at age 11

This paper explores the correlates of the socio-economic gradient in children’s educational performance through the primary school years. Thus it sits between the companion papers on pre-school cognitive outcomes and attainment in the secondary school years in this Special Issue. The poorest 20% of children score, on average 14 percentile points lower than the middle 20% in Key Stage 2 tests at age 11, and 31 percentile points lower than the richest 20%. Overall around one third of the attainment gaps by socio-economic background at age 11 are found to emerge after age 7. The evolution of attainment gaps over this period is found to be related a range of attitudes to education and behavioural patterns of the study children. Low maternal aspirations for the child’s final educational attainment are strongly linked to the widening socio-economic gap during these years, over and above their influence on the child’s own measured attitudes and behaviours. JEL codes: I21

Selections and social selectivity on the academic track: A life-course analysis of educational attainment in Germany

Graduating from university is just the final step of an extended educational career. Sociological transition research has revealed that final educational attainment must be understood as the result of a sequence of successive decisions. With regard to graduation from university, one has to take into account that upper secondary school qualifications are required for enrolling in the first place, and in Germany, the decision for this kind of schooling is at a much earlier age. So where on the long way to the university degree does Germany ‘lose’ its potential academics and in particular its lower class children? This paper presents a detailed picture of the life-course development of educational careers by analyzing the various steps of the collective educational history of a particular birth cohort. The paper takes account of both the country-specific institutional structures of the educational system and inter-individual variation in educational trajectories and combines both aspects in an analysis of the most relevant types of educational transitions associated with the ‘academic track’. Altogether, the transitions aggregate to the final number of graduates as well as to the observed level of inequality in educational attainment. In our empirical analyses, we are interested in both the overall selection at particular transitions and social differences in these transition patterns. We use survey data on participation and social selectivity in education. The paper confirms the usefulness of transition research for understanding the process of educational attainment; an analysis based on transitions is clearly superior to an analysis which focuses purely on stock figures of educational attainment. However, the paper also shows that conventional forms of transition research are often too simple as they assume an ideal-typical sequence of transitions during education. Educational careers in reality often deviate from this model. The number of young people (and in particular lower class children) who try to join the ‘academic track’ at least once during their educational career is much higher than the number of those who graduate successfully in the end. Accounting for the most relevant events helps to understand the quantitative and qualitative selectivity of the German educational system and may serve as a model for research on other aspects of educational inequality as well as on other educational systems.

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.

Integration of Childhood Immigrants in the Short and Long Run — Swedish Evidence

Immigrant children are often at a disadvantage at school while they adjust to their new environment. It has been found that the age at immigration of 7 or above represents a sensitive period as regards these children's school performance for two main reasons: they have passed their prime age for language learning, and their acquisition of subject skills is less efficient while they learn to master the new language. Using Swedish administrative data, we track childhood immigrants born between 1972 and 1976 over time from adolescence (at 16) to adulthood (at 30), and study the role of age at immigration for educational and labor market outcomes. We find that immigration at a sensitive age (compared to a very young age) has a strong negative impact on compulsory school performance, but that the same individuals catch up strongly in terms of final educational attainment. In spite of this educational catching up, however, we find a considerable negative impact on earnings for men. We are able to rule out two potential mechanisms behind this puzzling result: It cannot be explained either by an impact on the chosen field of study or on completion time.

The Impact of a Primary School Reform on Educational Stratification: A Norwegian Study of Neighbour and School Mate Correlations

School quality is hard to define and measure. It is influenced by not only school expenditures, but also characteristics that are hard to measure like norms and peer effects among teachers and pupils. Furthermore, family background and community characteristics are important in explaining educational outcomes. In this paper we study the composite effect of primary schools and neighbourhoods on adult educational attainment controlling for family characteristics. Instead of identifying the effect of specific neighbourhood and school characteristics on educational attainment, we focus on correlations in final years of schooling among neighbouring children and school mates. We find a clear trend of declining influence of childhood location over the 24 year period (birth cohorts 1947-1970). Then we ask whether a change in the compulsory school law extending the mandatory years of education, can explain this pattern. We find some effect of the primary school reform on the change in the neighbourhood effect. Motivated by the fact that neighbouring children typically go to the same school, we estimate school mate correlations for children born in the 1960s. The overall impact of factors shared by children who graduated from the same school at the age of 15/16 is negligible. The variation in “school quality” and the impact of peers on final educational attainment seem to have been very limited in Norway.

Educational Expansion and Educational Reproduction in Eastern Europe, 1940-1979

This paper considers changes in the effects of parental background on educational attainment in five Eastern European nations (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) over the 1940-1979 period. Data of male respondents (N = 13,997) from Treiman and Szeleny’s ‘Social Stratification in Eastern European’ surveys held in these countries are analysed. The paper shows slight but consistent decreases in the effects of parents’ education, status and political partymembership on final educational attainment (measured in years of schooling). On the other hand, it demonstrates stability or increases in the effects of parental background on the continuation probabilities at schooling transitions. Applying a method developed by Mare (ASR 1981), the paper reveals that the slight decreases in the effects of parental background on final educational attainment result from two offsetting influences. Stability or slight increases in the effects of parental background on school continuation probabilities in schooling transitions resulted in the stability of increase in these effects, whereas the substantial educational expansion that occurred in these nations resulted in their decrease. Czech Sociological Review, 1996, Vol. 4 (No. 2: 187-210)