Variation In Educational Attainment Research Articles

Is educational attainment associated with acute exposure to air pollution and pollen, and is it worse for pupils with asthma and seasonal allergic rhinitis?

IntroductionThere is a lack of evidence of the adverse effects of air pollution and pollen on cognition for people with air quality related health conditions. This study explored the effects of air quality and respiratory health conditions on educational attainment for 18,241 pupils across the city of Cardiff, United Kingdom.
 Objectives and ApproachAnonymised, routinely collected health and education data were linked at the household and school level with modelled high spatial resolution pollution data, and daily pollen measurements using the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank. This created 7 repeated cross-sectional cohorts (2009-2015). Multilevel linear regression analysis examined whether exam performance was associated with health status and/or air quality levels averaged at school and home locations during revision and examination periods. We also investigated the combined effects of air quality and associations with educational attainment for pupils who were treated for asthma and/or Severe Allergic Rhinitis (SAR), and those who were not.
 ResultsThe cohort contained 9337 males and 8904 female pupils. There were 871 treated for asthma, 2091 for SAR, and 634 treated for both. Asthma was not associated with exam performance (p=0.700). However, SAR was positively associated with exam performance (p 2) was negatively associated with educational attainment (p = 0.002). Other indicators of air quality (pollutants: Ozone, Particulate Matter - PM2.5, and pollen) were not associated with educational attainment (p> 0.05). Exposure to NO2 was negatively associated with educational attainment irrespective of treatment for asthma or SAR. There was no combined effect of air quality on the variation in educational attainment between those who are treated for asthma and/or SAR and those who were not.
 Conclusion/ImplicationsIrrespective of health status, exposure to NO2 was negatively associated with educational attainment. Treatment seeking behaviour may be a possible explanation for the positive association between SAR and educational attainment. For a more accurate reflection of health status, health outcomes not subject to treatment seeking behaviour should be investigated.

Are children who are treated for asthma and seasonal allergic rhinitis disadvantaged in their educational attainment when acutely exposed to air pollution and pollen? A feasibility study

BackgroundThere is a lack of evidence of the adverse effects which air quality has on cognition for people with air quality-related health conditions, these are not widely documented in the literature. Educational attainment, as a proxy for cognition, may increase with improved air quality.
 ObjectivesPrepare individual and household level linked environmental and health data for analysis within an anonymised safe haven; analyse the linked dataset for our study investigating: Cognition, Respiratory Tract illness and Effects of eXposure (CORTEX).
 MethodsAnonymised, routinely collected health and education data were linked with high spatial resolution pollution measurements and daily pollen measurements to provide repeated cross-sectional cohorts (2009-2015) on 18,241 pupils across the city of Cardiff, using the SAIL databank. A fully adjusted multilevel linear regression analysis examined associations between health status and/or air quality. Cohort, school and individual level confounders were controlled for. We hope that using individual-level multi-location daily exposure assessment will help to clarify the role of traffic and prevent potential community-level confounding. Combined effects of air quality on variation in educational attainment between those treated for asthma and/or Severe Allergic Rhinitis (SAR), and those not treated, was also investigated.
 FindingsAsthma was not associated with exam performance (p=0.7). However, SAR was positively associated with exam performance (p<0.001). Exposure to air pollution was negatively associated with educational attainment regardless of health status.
 ConclusionsIrrespective of health status, air quality was negatively associated with educational attainment. Treatment seeking behaviour may explain the positive association between SAR and educational attainment. For a more accurate reflection of health status, health outcomes not subject to treatment seeking behaviours, such as emergency hospital admission, should be investigated.

Personality, cognitive skills and life outcomes: evidence from the Polish follow-up study to PIAAC

BackgroundThere is a growing literature providing evidence on the importance of non-cognitive skills for life outcomes. However, to date there is limited evidence on the gains from incorporating such measures into large-scale competence surveys.MethodsWe investigate the relationship between personality traits and eight important life outcomes: educational attainment, labour market participation, employability, wages, job satisfaction, health, trust and life satisfaction measured in the Polish follow-up study to PIAAC. The study assesses two short scales: the Big Five Inventory and Grit. First, we compare explanatory power of personality traits to that of cognitive skills measured by PIAAC. Second, an incremental validity of Grit after controlling for the Big Five dimensions is assessed.ResultsThe analyses show that differences in personality traits are important in explaining differences in life outcomes. Educational attainment is more strongly related to cognitive skills, while for wages, the explanatory power of personality and cognitive skills is similar. For most of the subjective outcomes, the Big Five traits outperform cognitive skills in predictive power. Conscientiousness is positively related to most of the outcomes analysed while Neuroticism has a negative relationship. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and cognitive skills, Big Five traits add explanatory power to all models except for employability. Grit explains some additional variation in educational attainment and in a number of subjective outcomes: health, trust, job and life satisfaction, even after adjusting for the effects of cognitive skills and Big Five traits.ConclusionsGiven the potential benefits and relatively small burden on respondents in terms of required time it seems advisable to incorporate measures of personality traits into competence surveys as they contribute to explaining the variability in policy-relevant outcomes. The use of the Big Five Inventory seems preferable to Grit when a broad range of life outcomes is of interest, as the former covers multiple aspects of personality. However, using both scales offers an improvement in explanatory power.

Abstract 209: Education Level and Long-Term Outcomes After Acute Myocardial Infarction: The China PEACE Prospective AMI Study

Background: China has a growing burden of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and wide variation in educational attainment. Less education is associated with worse cardiovascular outcomes in Western populations; whether this relationship exists in China is unclear. We assessed the association between educational attainment and AMI outcomes in China to inform future healthcare interventions. Methods: We used data from the prospective China PEACE-Prospective AMI study of 3369 consecutive patients hospitalized with AMI from 53 hospitals across all 21 provinces between 2012 and 2015. We collected detailed information from abstraction of hospital records, supplemented with patient interviews. Educational attainment was categorized into: high (high school, college or postgraduate degree), intermediate (junior high school), or low (primary school or illiterate). We used survival models to assess the relationship between education and 1-year all-cause mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE: all-cause death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, heart failure), both unadjusted and after adjustment for demographic characteristics and cardiovascular risk factors. Results: The mean participant age was 60.7±11.9 years, 23.2% (781 of 3369) were women, and 33.3% (1123 of 3369) had high, 32.4% (1092 of 3369) intermediate, and 34.3% (1154 of 3369) low educational attainment. In unadjusted analysis, compared with high educational attainment, low educational attainment was associated with a higher 1-year risk of death (HR for low vs high education 3.09, 95% CI 1.69-5.65) and MACE (HR 2.41, 95% CI 1.72-3.37)(Figure). In risk-adjusted analyses, the association between education and mortality was attenuated and no longer statistically significant (adjusted HR 1.68, 95%CI 0.89-3.19, P = .11). However, the risk of MACE at one year remained significantly greater (adjusted HR 1.81, 95%CI 1.27-2.58, P = .001). Conclusions: In a national Chinese cohort of patients hospitalized with AMI, lower educational attainment was associated with a higher risk of adverse events in the year following discharge. This association highlights the need to explore mechanisms underlying this relationship, and to consider interventions for adults with lower levels of education.

Mapping local variation in educational attainment across Africa

Educational attainment for women of reproductive age is linked to reduced child and maternal mortality, lower fertility and improved reproductive health. Comparable analyses of attainment exist only at the national level, potentially obscuring patterns in subnational inequality. Evidence suggests that wide disparities between urban and rural populations exist, raising questions about where the majority of progress towards the education targets of the Sustainable Development Goals is occurring in African countries. Here we explore within-country inequalities by predicting years of schooling across five by five kilometre grids, generating estimates of average educational attainment by age and sex at subnational levels. Despite marked progress in attainment from 2000 to 2015 across Africa, substantial differences persist between locations and sexes. These differences have widened in many countries, particularly across the Sahel. These high-resolution, comparable estimates improve the ability of decision-makers to plan the precisely targeted interventions that will be necessary to deliver progress during the era of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Determinants of Educational Attainments Among Muslims in Kerala: Role of Family Background and Gender

This research investigates how well the following factors; fathers’ education, mothers’ education, fathers’ occupation, parents’ income and gender explains the variations in educational attainment of children in the Muslim community in Kerala. The analysis used data from 431 randomly selected Muslim respondents, 231 males and 200 females, aged 25-40 years from 24 election wards of 10 panchayats and one municipality. Respondents aged 25-40 years were selected from the socio-economic caste census 2011 data. A multinomial logistic model is fitted to a dependent variable measuring level of education into four categories. The result showed that all the factors were significantly predicting the educational attainment of children except parental income.

Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

Recent advances in behavioral genetics allow us to overcome past limitations on the study of genes and human capital accumulation. We build on this progress to explore the relationship between observed genetic variants, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that observed genetic variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, can explain 3.2-6.6 percent of the variation in educational attainment depending on the specification. Incorporating this genetic information into economic analysis using a rich longitudinal data set allows us to better understand the structure of ability endowments, including how they interact with childhood environments to predict a host of labor market outcomes. Understanding these interactions is particularly important for designing appropriate policies to reduce economic disparities. A recurring theme in our findings is that individuals who grew up in economically disadvantaged households face worse outcomes compared to individuals with the same genetic score, but from higher-SES households. This suggests the existence of unrealized human potential and also raises the possibility that human capital investments could lead to a more efficient use of human resources.

The Sooner the Better? Compulsory Schooling Reforms in Sweden

This paper evaluates the impact on earnings, pensions, and other labor market outcomes of two parallel educational reforms increasing instructional time in Swedish primary school. The reforms extended the compulsory years of schooling from 6 to 7 years and the annual term length from 34.5/36.5 to 39 weeks per year. Gradually introduced over the 1930-1950 period in more than 2,500 school districts, the extensions generated large exogenous variation in educational attainment at different points in primary school while the overall school system and curricula remained unchanged. The reforms thus constitute an ideal quasi-experimental setting for analyzing the long-run causal impact of compulsory education keeping other school characteristics fixed.With a majority of students receiving only primary schooling, both reforms affected large shares of the population and consequently had large impacts on educational attainment at the compulsory level. We find striking differences in impact between the two reforms, and between males and females. Estimated returns to compulsory schooling are robustly positive only for females, who experience a small increase in early career earnings (~ 2%) when exposed to a 7th year of schooling, and large and persistent increases in earnings (~ 4 – 5%) when exposed to an extended school year. The effects are driven by the extensive margin, in particular increased employment in the public sector.

The role of common genetic variation in educational attainment and income: evidence from the National Child Development Study.

We investigated the role of common genetic variation in educational attainment and household income. We used data from 5,458 participants of the National Child Development Study to estimate: 1) the associations of rs9320913, rs11584700 and rs4851266 and socioeconomic position and educational phenotypes; and 2) the univariate chip-heritability of each phenotype, and the genetic correlation between each phenotype and educational attainment at age 16. The three SNPs were associated with most measures of educational attainment. Common genetic variation contributed to 6 of 14 socioeconomic background phenotypes, and 17 of 29 educational phenotypes. We found evidence of genetic correlations between educational attainment at age 16 and 4 of 14 social background and 8 of 28 educational phenotypes. This suggests common genetic variation contributes both to differences in educational attainment and its relationship with other phenotypes. However, we remain cautious that cryptic population structure, assortative mating, and dynastic effects may influence these associations.

The declining influence of family background on educational attainment in Australia: The role of measured and unmeasured influences

The paper examines changes in the influence of family background, including socioeconomic and social background variables on educational attainment in Australia for cohorts born between 1890 and 1982. We test hypotheses from modernization theory on sibling data using random effects models and find: (i) substantial declines in the influence of family background on educational attainment (indicated by the sibling intraclass correlations); (ii) declines in the effects of both economic and cultural socioeconomic background variables; (iii) changes in the effects of some social background variables (e.g., family size); (iv) and declines in the extent that socioeconomic and social background factors account for variation in educational attainment. Unmeasured family background factors are more important, and proportionally increasingly so, for educational attainment than the measured socioeconomic and social background factors analyzed. Fixed effects models showed steeper declines in the effects of socioeconomic background variables than in standard analyses suggesting that unmeasured family factors associated with socioeconomic background obscure the full extent of the decline.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Disruptions to Education, and the Returns to Schooling in Urban China

In determining whether a country's higher education system should be expanded, it is important for policymakers first to determine the extent to which high private returns to post-secondary education are an indication of the scarcity of graduates instead of the high unobserved ability of students who choose to attend post-secondary education. To this end, the paper identifies the returns to schooling in urban China using individual-level variation in educational attainment caused by exogenous city-wide disruptions to education during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. For city-cohorts who experienced greater disruptions, children's educational attainment became less correlated with that of their fathers and more influenced by whether their fathers held administrative positions. The analysis calculates returns to college education using data from the China Urban Labor Survey conducted in five large cities in 2001. The results are consistent with the selection of high-ability students into higher education. The analysis also demonstrates that these results are unlikely to be driven by sample selection bias associated with migration, or by alternative pathways through which the Cultural Revolution could have affected adult productivity.

Gender Roles and Ethnic Variation in Educational Attainment in Ürümchi

Gender Roles and Ethnic Variation in Educational Attainment in Ürümchi

Gender differences in earnings and labor supply in early career: evidence from Kosovo’s school-to-work transition survey

Very little is known about gender wage disparities in Kosovo and, to date, nothing is known about how such wage disparities evolve over time, particularly during the first few years spent by young workers in the labor market. More generally, not much is known about gender wage gaps in early career worldwide, a period which is perceived to be an important determinant of the overall gender wage disparity. This paper analyzes data from the School-to-Work Transition (SWT) survey, an unusual survey conducted by the ILO between 2004 and 2006 in eight countries, including Kosovo, that documents the labor market experiences of the youngest age segment in the labor force (age 15–25 years). The results of the analysis suggest that, on average, women have lower education attainment than men but this educational disparity is masked among the sample of employed men and women who tend to be well-educated. The consequences of this dramatic segmentation of labor market participation are striking. On average, there is little or no gender wage gap. The results of the Juhn et al. (J Polit Econ 101:410–442, 1993) decomposition analysis reveals that gender wage differences are almost entirely driven by differences in characteristics (rather than either the returns to those characteristics or the residual). The greater average educational attainment of employed women, among other characteristics, tends to fully offset the gender wage gap. Not surprisingly, the returns to women’s education among employed women are low because there is little variation in educational attainment among the sample of well-educated employed women. When the analysis controls for sample selection bias and heterogeneity, the returns to women’s education rise, confirming the lower productivity-related characteristics of non-employed women compared to employed women. The relatively small sample constrains a fuller analysis of the emergence of the gender wage gap, which, according to a small but growing international literature, typically materializes during childbearing years. I21, J13, J15, J16, J24, J31, J7, P30

Gender Differences in Earnings and Labor Supply in Early Career: Evidence from Kosovo's School-to-Work Transition Survey

Very little is known about gender wage disparities in Kosovo and, to date, nothing is known about how such wage disparities evolve over time, particularly during the first few years spent by young workers in the labor market. More generally, not much is known about gender wage gaps in early career worldwide, a period which is perceived to be an important determinant of the overall gender wage disparity. This paper analyzes data from the School-to-Work Transition (SWT) survey, an unusual survey conducted by the ILO between 2004 and 2006 in eight countries, including Kosovo, that documents the labor market experiences of the youngest age segment in the labor force (age 15–25 years). The results of the analysis suggest that, on average, women have lower education attainment than men but this educational disparity is masked among the sample of employed men and women who tend to be well-educated. The consequences of this dramatic segmentation of labor market participation are striking. On average, there is little or no gender wage gap. The results of the Juhn et al. (1993) decomposition analysis reveals that gender wage differences are almost entirely driven by differences in characteristics (rather than either the returns to those characteristics or the residual). The greater average educational attainment of employed women, among other characteristics, tends to fully offset the gender wage gap. Not surprisingly, the returns to women's education among employed women are low because there is little variation in educational attainment among the sample of well-educated employed women. When the analysis controls for sample selection bias and heterogeneity, the returns to women's education rise, confirming the lower productivity-related characteristics of non-employed women compared to employed women. The relatively small sample constrains a fuller analysis of the emergence of the gender wage gap, which, according to a small but growing international literature, typically materializes during childbearing years.

Appraisal of Cognition in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease: A Conceptual Review

Biomarker evidence and clinical observations support the hypothesis that there is a diagnosable condition termed preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recently, a workgroup convened under the auspices of the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association proposed a framework for defining preclinical AD. The definition was based on the presence of biomarkers that are indicative of the AD pathophysiological process. In the context of abnormal AD biomarkers, the workgroup postulated that 'subtle cognitive changes' occurred as well. Based on studies of genetically at-risk individuals and those destined to become demented, who were observed while still cognitively normal, low performance on learning and memory functions may be the earliest cognitive manifestations of preclinical AD, at the group level at least. It is not clear whether subtle cognitive decline can be detected reliably on an individual basis. Preclinical AD cognitive changes could be diagnosed by traditional neuropsychological testing, computerized testing, assessments of subjective memory loss, assessments of levels of participation in cognitively stimulating activities and direct measurement of activity using recently developed monitoring technology. Confounding effects of normal aging, test-retest variability, variations in educational attainment, as well as the presence of other brain diseases make diagnosing cognitive decline due to preclinical AD challenging.

The Genetic Basis of Political Sophistication

Political sophistication is a concept that encompasses political reasoning, the coherence of people's issue attitudes, and their knowledge of political processes. To what extent is political sophistication affected by genes and environments? Do these distinct but related measures of sophistication share a common genetic structure? We analyze survey data collected from participants in the Minnesota Twin Registry to estimate influences of genes and environments on variables used to measure political sophistication. Additive genetic factors explain 48-76% of the variation in educational attainment, political interest, and political knowledge, while dominance genetics influence 28% of the variance of ideological consistency. Multivariate analyses show that, although these measures share common genetic and unique environmental factors to a modest extent, much of the variance is explained by specific genetic and unique environmental factors. Ideological consistency appears to be mostly distinct from the other measures, as it is strongly accounted for by unique environmental influences.

Modelling categorical data to identify factors influencing concern for the natural environment in Iran

Loglinear modelling techniques were used to identify the interactions and interrelationships underlying categorical environmental concern data collected from 9062 respondents in Iran. After fitting various loglinear models to the data, the most parsimonious model highlighted that a combination of interacting factors, namely educational attainment, age, gender, and residential location were responsible for influencing personal concern for the environment. Although high educational attainment had a close correspondence with high concern for the environment the loglinear results, when visualized with a geographical information system, demonstrated wide spatial variations in educational attainment and concern for the environment. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents were not highly educated, and were therefore not highly concerned for the environment. The finding that both rural and urban male and female respondents in the 15-24 years age category, with 10-12 years of education, had the strongest interaction with personal concern for the environment could be beneficial for policy planners to utilize education as the primary instrument to enhance environmental governance and prospects for sustainable development.

Education and Development in Bangladesh: A Study from Spatial Perspective

Spatial polarization and geo-spatial inequality occur in case of development around the world. Importance of location and space for development is yet to receive attention in policy agenda of Bangladesh. This study is an attempt to assess the spatial variation in educational attainment and educational facilities at regional levels in Bangladesh. Regional variations in educational attainment have been assessed with respect to some selected indicators like literacy rate of 7 years and above, adult literacy rate, school enrolment rate, school attendance and student-teacher ratio. Relationship between poverty and educational attainment has also been assessed to find out the impact of poverty on education at regional levels in the country. In particular, this study has highlighted spatial variations in education facilities like number of primary school, secondary school, college through identifying developed and lagging regions in the country. Location Quotient (LQ) Analysis, Gini index, Composite Analysis have been used to identify the spatial variations in education at regional levels in the country. These findings may be helpful for government and policy makers to adopt necessary policies and strategies for education to ensure balanced development of the country at regional strata in Bangladesh. Journal of Bangladesh Institute of Planners, Vol. 3, Dec 2010, pp. 1-16

The Effects of Stricter Compulsory Schooling Legislation on School Quality

This paper is the first to present an estimate of the relationship between compulsory schooling laws and school quality in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. To arrive at this estimate I use previously unused city-level data on pupil-teacher ratios, expenditures per pupil, length of school term, and attendance rates. My results indicate that compulsory schooling laws negatively affected school quality. This suggests that the effects of government policy to increase education levels during this period should be tempered since each year of education after the stricter laws were passed was of lower quality. Moreover, this negative relationship persisted for several years after the laws were passed. As an important aside, my results imply that returns-to-schooling estimates that use compulsory schooling law changes as an exogenous source of variation in educational attainment are potentially biased downwards.

The Co-Twin Methodology and Returns to Schooling - Testing a Critical Assumption

Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling feature prominently in the labor economics literature. The validity of such estimates hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation in schooling is explained by factors which are unrelated to wage earning ability. This paper develops a framework for testing this assumption, and finds, using a unique dataset of monozygotic twins, strong evidence against it. Differences in adolescent IQ test scores predict within-pair variation in educational attainment, and including IQ in the wage equation causes within-pair point estimates for the returns to schooling to decline significantly. Our results thus cast doubt on the validity of estimates derived from the co-twin literature.