Longer-run Outcomes Research Articles

My Professor Cares: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Faculty Engagement

We provide experimental evidence on the impact of specific faculty behaviors aimed at increasing student success for college students from historically underrepresented groups. The intervention was developed after conducting in-person focus groups and a pilot experiment. We find significant positive treatment effects across a multitude of short- and longer-run outcomes. Specifically, underrep-resented students in the treatment report more positive perceptions of the professor and earned higher course grades. These positive effects persisted over the next several years, with students in the treatment more likely to persist in college, resulting in increased credit accumulation and degree completion. (JEL I22, I23, I28, J15, J44)

Knowing what it takes: The effect of information about returns to studying on study effort and achievement

We study the effect of providing students with information on the returns to study effort in a large introductory microeconomics course. To do so, we use historical time-use data from the course’s online homework module to estimate the association between study time and course performance. We measure the impact of providing students this information on subsequent study effort, class attendance, homework scores, and exam performance using a randomized research design. Results show that the information contained in our intervention increased time spent studying by approximately 7% throughout the entire course, though this effect is imprecisely measured. However, when examining shorter-run outcomes (prior to the next exam) we find larger and more precisely estimated treatment effects on time spent on homeworks (12%) and homework scores (14% of a standard deviation). Treatment effects on longer run outcomes in the course are negligible. We additionally estimate large, but somewhat imprecise, average treatment effects on class attendance and small positive and insignificant average treatment effects on exam performance throughout the course.

Comparing earnings outcome differences between all graduates and title IV graduates

Recently, two public data products have been released that publish earnings outcomes for college graduates by program of study and institution: Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes and College Scorecard, from the Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Education, respectively. While the earnings data underlying the data products is similar, the purposes and scope of the products are different. College Scorecard focuses only on graduates that receive Title IV aid, while PSEO includes all graduates. This paper describes how the differences in these two samples affect the published earnings outcomes. For institutions in my sample, an average of sixty percent of baccalaureate graduates receive Title IV aid. I show that short-run earnings outcomes are very similar for these two samples, while longer-run outcomes (10 years after graduation) are significantly lower for the Title IV population, and that this difference grows consistently over time. I also show that program ranking can change significantly when considering the Title IV population rather than the entire graduate population.

School Effects on Socioemotional Development, School-Based Arrests, and Educational Attainment

Using value-added models on data from Chicago Public Schools, we find that high schools impact students' self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on their test score impacts, schools that improve SED in ninth grade reduce school-based arrests and increase high school completion and college going. For most longer-run outcomes, using both SED and test score value added more than doubles the variance of the explained school effect relative to using test score value added alone. Results suggest that high school impacts on SED can be captured using self-report surveys and SED can be fostered by schools to improve longer-run outcomes. (JEL I21, J24, K42)

Who Benefits from Attending Effective Schools? Examining Heterogeneity in High School Impacts

We estimate the longer-run effects of attending an effective high school (one that improves a combination of test scores, survey measures of socio-emotional development and behaviours in 9th-grade) for students who are more versus less educationally advantaged (i.e., likely to attain more years of education based on 8th-grade characteristics). All students benefit from attending effective schools. However, the least advantaged students experience the largest improvements in high-school graduation, college-going, and school-based arrests. These patterns are driven by the least advantaged students benefiting the most from school impacts on the non-test-score dimensions of school quality. However, while there is considerable overlap in the effectiveness of schools attended by more and less advantaged students, it is the most advantaged students that are most likely to attend highly effective schools. These patterns underscore the importance of quality schools, and the non-test score components of quality schools, for improving the longer-run outcomes for less advantaged students. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Measuring development resilience in the world’s poorest countries

The dangerous nexus of climate change, rapid population growth, and conflict has pushed several poor regions of the world—notably in rural areas of the Sahel, the Horn, and the Great Lakes regions of Africa—into states of seemingly permanent crisis (Fig. 1). The distinction between short-run humanitarian response and development assistance aimed at longer-run outcomes has grown increasingly blurred in such places. This disturbing state of affairs, along with social scientists’ expanded knowledge of the intimate interactions between short-term shocks and long-run economic development, has catalyzed widespread interest in building “development resilience,” which has quickly become a centerpiece of many humanitarian and development organizations’ programming.

The Impact of Immigrant Classmates on Educational Outcomes

Despite a growing empirical literature on the relationship between immigrant concentration in schools and student achievement, few studies address longer-run outcomes. Using Norwegian registry data, this study addresses the causal impact of immigrant classmates on educational attainment in young adulthood, as well as academic track enrollment and educational achievement in school, within six entire student cohorts in their final tenth grade of compulsory education (310,742 students, 751 schools). Controlling for school fixed effects, native peer characteristics, and observed characteristics of students and their families, we find that students in cohorts with more immigrant peers within the same school have slightly higher propensities to complete upper-secondary education by their early twenties. The effects are about three times stronger among students from immigrant families compared to students with native-born parents, and are also robust to adjustment for average grade achievement. Moreover, these peer effects seem to mainly reflect the presence of immigrant classmates from high-achieving origin regions, while we do not find corresponding negative effects of exposure to immigrant classmates from low-achieving origin regions. In conclusion, these results indicate a modest positive influence of exposure to immigrant classmates on, primarily, immigrant students’ educational attainment several years later.

The Impact of Immigrant Classmates on Educational Outcomes in Egalitarian Norway

Despite a growing empirical literature on the relationship between immigrant concentration in schools and student achievement, few studies address longer-run outcomes. Using Norwegian registry data, this study addresses the causal impact of immigrant classmates on educational attainment in young adulthood, as well as academic track enrollment and educational achievement in school, within six entire student cohorts in their final 10th grade of compulsory education (310,742 students, 751 schools). Controlling for school fixed effects, native peer characteristics and observed characteristics of students and their families, we find that students in cohorts with more immigrant peers within the same school have slightly higher propensities to complete upper secondary education by their early twenties. The effects are about three times stronger among students from immigrant families compared to students with native-born parents, and are also robust to adjustment for average grade achievement. Moreover, these peer effects seem to primarily reflect the presence of immigrant classmates from high-achieving origin regions, while we do not find corresponding negative effects of exposure to immigrant classmates from low-achieving origin regions. In conclusion, these results indicate a modest positive influence of exposure to immigrant classmates on, primarily, immigrant students’ educational attainment several years later.

Intensive Math Instruction and Educational Attainment: Long-Run Impacts of Double-Dose Algebra

Success or failure in freshman math has long been thought to have a strong impact on subsequent high school outcomes. We study an intensive math instruction policy in which students scoring below average on an 8th grade exam were assigned in 9th grade to an algebra course that doubled instructional time, altered peer composition and emphasized problem solving skills. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show positive and substantial longrun impacts of double-dose algebra on standardized test scores, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates. The attainment effects were larger than the test score effects would predict, highlighting the importance of evaluating educational interventions on longerrun outcomes. Perhaps because the intervention focused on verbal exposition of mathematical concepts, the intervention’s impact was generated largely by students with below average reading skills, highlighting the importance of targeting interventions towards appropriately skilled students. This is the first evidence we know of demonstrating the long-run impacts of such intensive math instruction.

Care or Cash? The Effect of Child Care Subsidies on Student Performance

Abstract Given the wide use of child care subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer-run outcomes. Using a sharp discon...

The impact of tougher education standards: Evidence from Florida

Abstract Many of the policies that fall under the school accountability umbrella are designed to incentivize students. Prominent among these are high school exit exams, standardized tests that, in some states, students must pass to earn a high school diploma. Proponents of these tests argue that by incentivizing students, they induce them to work harder and, therefore, improve their high school performance and, perhaps, longer-run outcomes; some of these proponents argue that these exams would be even more helpful if they were set at a higher standard. Critics worry that these exams prevent some students from graduating and cause others to dropout; they contend that these effects are worse if standards are higher. In this paper we investigate the impacts of an increase in the exit exam standard in Florida. Using difference-in-difference methods, we show that this had few of the negative effects claimed by critics. We cannot detect any positive effects of the higher standard, although such effects may be too small to be picked up with our data.

First-Round Impacts of the 2008 Chilean Pension System Reform

Abstract Chile’s innovative privatized pension system has been lauded as possible model for Social Security system overhauls in other countries, yet it has also been critiqued for not including a strong safety net for the uncovered sector. In response, the Bachelet government in 2008 implemented reforms to rectify this shortcoming. Here we offer the first systematic effort to directly evaluate the reform’s impacts, focusing on the new Basic Solidarity Pension for poor households with at least one person age 65+. Using the Social Protection Survey, we show that targeted poor households received about 2.4 percent more household annual income, with little evidence of crowding-out of private transfers. We also suggest that recipient household welfare probably increased due to slightly higher expenditures on basic consumption including healthcare, more leisure hours, and improved self-reported health. While measured short-run effects are small, follow-ups will be essential to gauge longer-run outcomes. Author Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge support provided by the Social Security Administration via a grant from the Michigan Retirement Research Center, the Pension Research Council and Boettner Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Aging (NIA) grant AG023774-01(P.I. Petra Todd) on “Lifecycle health, work, aging, insurance and pensions in Chile.” Opinions and errors are solely those of the authors and not of the institutions providing funding for this study or with which the authors are affiliated. © 2011 Behrman, Calderon, Mitchell, Vasquez and Bravo.

Under Pressure? The Effect of Peers on Outcomes of Young Adults

A variety of public campaigns, including the “Just Say No” campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to “Just Say No to Drugs”, are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on the long-run outcomes of teenagers. This is primarily due to two factors: the absence of information on peers merged with long-run outcomes of individuals and, equally important, the difficulty of separately identifying the role of peers. This paper uses data on the population of Norway and idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition within schools to examine the role of peer composition in 9 th grade on longer-run outcomes such as IQ scores at age 18, teenage childbearing, postcompulsory schooling educational track, adult labor market status, and earnings. We find that outcomes are influenced by the proportion of females in the grade, and these effects differ for men and women. Other peer variables (average age, average mother’s education) have little impact on the outcomes of teenagers.

Under Pressure? The Effect of Peers on Outcomes of Young Adults

A variety of public campaigns, including the Just Say campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to Just Say No to Drugs, are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on the long-run outcomes of teenagers. This is primarily due to two factors: the absence of information on peers merged with long-run outcomes of individuals and, equally important, the difficulty of separately identifying the role of peers. This paper uses data on the population of Norway and idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition within schools to examine the role of peer composition in 9th grade on longer-run outcomes such as IQ scores at age 18, teenage childbearing, post-compulsory schooling educational track, adult labor market status, and earnings. We find that outcomes are influenced by the proportion of females in the grade, and these effects differ for men and women. Other peer variables (average age, average mother's education) have little impact on the outcomes of teenagers.

From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard-to-measure characteristics. By applying within twin techniques using an unusually rich dataset from Norway, we examine the effects of birth weight on both short-run and long-run outcomes for the same cohorts. We find that birth weight does matter; despite short-run twin fixed effects estimates that are much smaller than OLS estimates, the effects on longer-run outcomes such as adult height, IQ, earnings, and education are significant and similar in magnitude to OLS estimates.