Latest publications from CEE

Interest Subsidies on Student Loans: A Better Class of Drain

Nicholas Barr Alison Johnston

CEEDP0114. March 2010.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp114.pdf

Valuing School Quality Via School Choice Reform

Stephen Machin Kjell Salvanes

CEEDP0113. March 2010.Among policymakers, educators and economists there remains a strong, sometimes heated, debate on the extent to which good schools matter. This is seen, for instance, in the strong trend towards establishing accountability systems in education in many countries across the world. In this paper, in line with some recent studies, we value school quality using house prices. We, however, adopt a rather different approach to other work, using a policy experiment regarding pupils’ choice to attend high schools to identify the relationship between house prices and school performance. We exploit a change in school choice policy that took place in Oslo county in 1997, where the school authorities opened up the possibility for every pupil to apply to any of the high schools in the county without having to live in the school’s catchment area (the rule that applied before 1997). Our estimates show evidence that parents substantially value better performing schools since the sensitivity of housing valuations to school performance falls significantly by over 50% following the school choice reform.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp113.pdf

Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation

Pedro Martins

CEEDP0112. March 2010.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp112.pdf

How Much Can We Learn from International Comparisons of Intergenerational Mobility?

Jo Blanden

CEEDP0111. November 2009.This paper summarises research on the relative level of intergenerational mobility – whether classified by income, social class, social status or education – considering observations from 65 countries. With the exception of social class, the different approaches reveal similar patterns. South America, other developing nations, southern European countries and France tending to have rather limited mobility while the Nordic countries exhibit strong mobility. Evidence for the US and Germany differs across the measures, with Germany immobile on education and class and fairly mobile on income and the reverse true for the US. These differences are likely explained by greater within-group income inequality and persistence in the US. The second part of the paper finds that mobility is negatively correlated with inequality and the returns to education and positively correlated with a nation’s education spending.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp111.pdf

Measuring the Returns to Lifelong Learning

Jo Blanden Franz Buscha Patrick Sturgis Peter Urwin

CEEDP0110. March 2010.This paper investigates the returns to lifelong learning, which is interpreted as the attainment of qualifications following entry into the labour market. For a number of reasons our analysis of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) represents an important addition to the existing evidence base. We allow for financial and non-financial returns to lifelong learning by using as dependent variables both (i) hourly earnings and (ii) CAMSIS score. A fixed effects specification counters the potential biases that arise from unobserved individual heterogeneity and the inclusion of lags allows estimation of how the returns to lifelong learning evolve over a ten year period after the qualification is obtained. We find evidence of earnings and occupation status returns using a broad categorisation of lifelong learning for both men and women, but more variability in returns when disaggregated NVQ-equivalent categories of qualification are considered. Our findings are broadly in line with existing evidence within the UK, which is mostly based on the analysis of cohort studies. 0f particular interest is the finding that returns to women materialise much sooner after the attainment of a qualification, than is the case for their male counterparts.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp110.pdf

The Century of Education

Christian Morrisson Fabrice Murtin

CEEDP0109. September 2009.This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period 1870-2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto (2007) database. The correlation between the two sets of average years of schooling in 1960 is equal to 0.96. We use a measurement error framework to merge the two databases, while correcting for a systematic measurement bias in Cohen and Soto (2007) linked to differential mortality across educational groups. Descriptive statistics show a continuous spread of education that has accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century. We find evidence of fast convergence in years of schooling for a sub-sample of advanced countries during the 1870-1914 globalization period, and of modest convergence since 1980. Less advanced countries have been excluded from the convergence club in both cases.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp109.pdf

Length of Compulsory Education and Voter Turnout - Evidence from a Staged Reform

Panu Pelkonen

CEEDP0108. September 2009.In this study, a long-term impact of additional schooling at the lower end of the educational distribution is measured on voter turnout. Schooling is instrumented with a staged Norwegian school reform, which increased minimum attainment by two years – from seven to nine. The impact is measured at two levels: individual, and municipality level. Both levels of analysis suggest that the additional education has no effect on the turnout rates. At the individual level, the impact of education is also tested on various measures of civic outcomes. Of these, only the likelihood of signing a petition is positively affected by education.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp108.pdf

To Leave or Not to Leave? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Impact of Failing High School Exit Exam

Dongshu Ou

CEEDP0107. August 2009.The high school exit exam (HSEE) is rapidly becoming a standardized assessment procedure for educational accountability in the United States. I use a unique state-specific dataset to identify the effect of failing the HSEE on the likelihood that a student drops out early based on a Regression Discontinuity design. It shows that students who barely fail the exam are more likely to exit than those who barely pass despite being offered retest opportunities. The discontinuity amounts to a large proportion of the dropout probability of barely-failers, particularly for minority and low-income students, suggesting that the potential benefit of raising educational standards might come at the cost of increasing inequalities in the educational system.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp107.pdf

An Analysis of the Benefit of NVQ2 Qualifications Acquired at Age 26-34

Anna Vignoles Augustin de Coulon

CEEDP0106. October 2008.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp106.pdf

Does Money Matter for Schools?

Helena Holmlund Sandra McNally Martina Viarengo

CEEDP0105. January 2009.There is considerable disagreement in the academic literature about whether raising school expenditure improves educational outcomes. Yet changing the level of resources is one of the key policy levers open to governments. In the UK, school expenditure has increased by about 40 per cent in real terms since 2000. Thus, providing an answer to the question as to whether such spending has an impact on educational outcomes (and whether it is good use of public money) is of paramount importance. In this paper we address this issue for England using much better data than what has generally been used in such studies. We are also able to test our identification assumption by use of a falsification test. We find that the increase in school expenditure over recent years has had a consistently positive effect on outcomes at the end of primary school. Back-of-envelope calculations suggest that the investment may well be cost-effective. There is also some evidence of heterogeneity in the effect of expenditure, with higher effects for students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp105.pdf

Parents' Basic Skills and Childrens' Cognitive Outcomes

Elena Meschi Anna Vignoles Augustin de Coulon

CEEDP0104. December 2008.The main aim of this paper is to assess how parents’ literacy and numeracy affect the cognitive skill of their children. The data used are from the British Cohort Survey (BCS) which provides in 2004 basic skill assessments for all cohort members and cognitive tests for their children. We find strong evidence that parents with higher basic skills have children who perform better in cognitive achievement tests. This result is robust to the inclusion of a wide range of factors, including family characteristics (socio-professional status, qualifications and income levels of the parents), family structure (number of siblings, lone parenthood), child characteristics (gender, age, whether first born, number of siblings) and even parents’ own early cognitive ability as measured at age 5. We estimate a model where cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of the children are simultaneously determined by their parents’ basic skills and other characteristics (using a SURE approach). We find that parents’ basic skills explain only their children’s cognitive skills, and not their non-cognitive outcomes. We suggest this provides some support for the proposition that parents’ basic skills are having a genuinely causal impact on children’s cognitive skills rather than simply being correlated with other unobserved parental characteristics that improve child achievement.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp104.pdf

School Quality, Child Wellbeing and Parents Satisfaction

Steve Gibbons Olmo Silva

CEEDP0103. January 2009.Researchers in economics of education usually assume that parents choose schools for their high academic performance, with some support from revealed preference evidence based on local house prices. However, anecdotal evidence and common sense suggest that school quality is not one-dimensional and that parents and children are concerned about other school factors related to pupil wellbeing. In this paper we consider whether parental notions of school quality are based on academic standards, and whether these notions are aligned with the wellbeing of the children. To do so, we use direct information on stated perceptions in the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to UK administrative records on pupil achievements. Our results suggest that test score based measures of school quality tend to dominate parents’ perceptions of educational excellence. However, school quality along this dimension is not strongly associated with pupil happiness and enjoyment of the learning environment.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp103.pdf

What Makes a Test Score? The Respective Contributions of Pupils, Schools and Peers in Achievement in English Primary Education

Francis Kramarz Stephen Machin Amine Ouazad

CEEDP0102. January 2009.This study develops an analytical framework for evaluating the respective contributions of pupils, peers, and school quality in affecting educational achievement. We implement this framework using rich data from England that matches pupils to their primary schools. The dataset records all English pupils and their test scores in Key Stage 1 (age 7) and Key Stage 2 (age 11) national examinations. The quality of the data source, coupled with our econometric techniques, allows us to assess the respective importance of different educational inputs. We can distinguish school effects that affect all pupils irrespective of their year and grade of study, from school-grade-year effects. Identification of pupil effects separately from these school-grade-year effects is achieved because students are mobile across schools. Peer effects are identified assuming variations in school-grade-year group composition in adjacent years are exogenous. We estimate three different specifications, the most general allowing Key Stage 2 results to be affected by the Key Stage 1 school(-grade-year) at which the pupil studied. We discuss the validity of our various exogeneity assumptions. Estimation results show statistically significant pupil ability, school and peer effects. Our analysis suggests the following ranking: pupils' ability and background are more important than school time-invariant inputs. Peer effects are significant, but small.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp102.pdf

Access, Choice and Participation in Higher Education

Steve Gibbons Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0101. January 2009.Geographical distance between parental home and college poses a potential barrier to higher education entry, and could be a deciding factor when choosing between institutions. Some students may be constrained in their education choices because they cannot afford to leave home, or have personal or cultural reasons to remain close to their family. This paper provides quantitative evidence on these issues using administrative data on a cohort of university entrants in England, which includes both individual and school level information. Our findings are that geographical distance has little or no impact on the decision to participate, but has a strong influence on institutional choice. Institution attendance probabilities fall with distance from home, with an elasticity of -1. Small, but behaviourally important differences between demographic groups have implications for the sorting of students across institutions. There are also implications for the spatial distribution of human capital, because the quality of students’ education is linked to the quality of institutions that are close to home.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp101.pdf

Education and Mobility

Stephen Machin Panu Pelkonen Kjell Salvanes

CEEDP0100. December 2008.We show that the length of compulsory education has a causal impact on regional labour mobility. The analysis is based on a quasi-exogenous staged Norwegian school reform, and register data on the whole population. Based on the results, we conclude that part of the US-Europe difference, as well as the European North-South difference in labour mobility, is likely to be due to differences in levels of education in the respective regions.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp100.pdf

University Quality and Graduate Wages in the UK

Iftikhar Hussain Sandra McNally Shqiponja Telhaj

CEEDP0099. March 2009.We examine the links between various measures of university quality and graduate earnings in the United Kingdom. We explore the implications of using different measures of quality and combining them into an aggregate measure. Our findings suggest a positive return to university quality with an average earnings differential of about 6 percent for a one standard deviation rise in university quality. However, the relationship between university quality and wages is highly non-linear, with a much higher return at the top of the distribution. There is some indication that returns may be increasing over time.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp99.pdf

Assessed by a Teacher Like Me: Race, Gender and Subjective Evaluations

Amine Ouazad

CEEDP0098. December 2008.The underrepresentation of minority teachers and male teachers remains an issue in US elementary education, and there is evidence that racial interactions partly shape student performance. However there is little work on discrimination within the classroom. Do teachers give better grades to children of their own race, ethnicity or gender? A US nationally representative longitudinal dataset that includes both test scores and teacher assessments offers a unique opportunity to answer this question. I look at the effect of being assessed by a same race or same gender teacher conditionally on test scores, child effects and teacher effects. This strategy controls for three confounding effects: (i) children of different races and genders may react differently in the classroom and during examinations (ii) teachers may capture skills that are not captured by test scores and (iii) tough teachers may be matched with specific races or genders. Results indicate that teachers give higher assessments to children of their own race, but not significantly higher assessments to children of their own gender. Also, this effect comes from the differential assessments given to non-hispanic black and hispanic children. White teachers give significantly lower assessments to non-hispanic black children and to hispanic children. Results are robust to various checks on endogenous mobility, measurement error and reverse causality. Moreover children's behavior is not a significant determinant of same race or same gender matching. Finally relative grading does not explain the main results of this paper.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp98.pdf

The Convergence of Compulsory Schooling in Western Europe: 1950-2000

Fabrice Murtin Martina Viarengo

CEEDP0095. November 2008.This paper examines the expansion of compulsory schooling in fifteen Western European countries over the period 1950-2000. We show that a convergence process of mandatory years of schooling has occurred across these countries since 1950. We argue that the major driver of this phenomenon is the existence of decreasing aggregate returns to education that have limited the extension of compulsory schooling. Then we test whether convergence still holds when confronted with other explanations described in the literature, which are respectively based on technology and trade, institutions, and the budget constraint of governments. Conditional convergence does hold and we find that openness has been another robust determinant of compulsory years of schooling, reflecting the need of education in an increasingly globalized world.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp95.pdf

Competition for private and state school teachers

Francis Green Stephen Machin Richard Murphy Yu Zhu

CEEDP0094. January 2008.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp94.pdf

When You Are Born Matters: The Imapct of Date of Birth on Child Cognitive Outcomes in England

Claire Crawford Lorraine Dearden Costas Meghir

CEEDP0093. October 2007.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp93.pdf

The Impact of Early Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills on Later Outcomes

Pedro Carneiro Claire Crawford Alissa Goodman

CEEDP0092. October 2007.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp92.pdf

Intergenerational Mobility and Assortative Mating: Effects of an Educational Reform

Helena Holmlund

CEEDP0091. November 2008.This paper provides new evidence on the role of the educational system for intergenerational mobility. I evaluate an educational reform, implemented in Sweden in the 1950s and 60s, which postponed tracking and extended compulsory education from seven to nine years. The reform may have influenced intergenerational mobility through several different channels. First, it is likely that the reform increased education more for children from low educated households, compared to those children with more educated parents. Second, postponing tracking to higher ages is likely to reduce the parental influence in the educational choice, which may weaken the intergenerational economic link between children and their parents. And finally, recognizing that economic well-being is determined by the income of the household, and that assortative mating plays a major role in the mobility process, I examine how the reform has affected mobility through changes in marital sorting. The underlying hypothesis is that the peer group in which couples form can be affected by the educational system. Differences-in-differences estimates and sibling-difference estimates indicate that the reform indeed resulted in a sizeable increase in intergenerational income mobility, but effects operating through marital sorting seem to play a minor role.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp91.pdf

Students' academic self-perception

Arnaud Chevalier Steve Gibbons Sherria Hoskins Martin Snell Andy Thorpe

CEEDP0090. January 2008.Participation rates in higher education differ persistently between some groups in society. Using two British datasets we investigate whether this gap is rooted in students’ mis-perception of their own and other’s ability, thereby increasing the expected costs to studying. Among high school pupils, we find that pupils with a more positive view of their academic abilities are more likely to expect to continue to higher education even after controlling for observable measures of ability and students’ characteristics. University students are also poor at estimating their own test-performance and over-estimate their predicted test score. However, females, white and working class students have less inflated view of themselves. Self-perception has limited impact on the expected probability of success and expected returns amongst these university students.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp90.pdf

The Returns to Qualifications in England: Updating the Evidence Base on Level 2 and Level 3 Vocational Qualifications

Charley Greenwood Andrew Jenkins Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0089. September 2007.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp89.pdf

Returns to Apprenticeship Training in Austria: Evidence from Failed Firms

Josef Fersterer Jörn-Steffen Pischke

CEEDP0088. February 2008.Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for theparticipants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the types of apprenticeships offered, and institutional descriptions suggest that there might be an important element of selection in who obtains an apprenticeship, and what type. In order to overcome the resulting ability bias we estimate returns to apprenticeship training for apprentices in failed firms in Austria. When a firm fails, current apprentices cannot complete their training in this firm. Because apprentices will be at different stages in their apprenticeship at that time, the failure of a firm will manipulate the length of the apprenticeship period completed for some apprentices. The time to the firm failure therefore serves as an instrument for the length of the apprenticeship completed both at the original firm and at otherfirms. We find instrumental variables returns which are similar or larger than the OLS returns in our sample, indicating relatively little selection.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp88.pdf

A Researcher's Guide to the Swedish Compulsory School Reform

Helena Holmlund

CEEDP0087. February 2008.When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in different municipalities at different points in time. Such variation across cohorts and regions can be used in a differences-in-differences framework, in order to estimate causal effects of education. This paper provides a guide to researchers who consider using the Swedish reform in an empirical analysis: I present a description and background of the reform, provide some baseline results, a reliability analysis of the reform coding, a discussion of whether the reform is a valid instrument, and comment on the interpretation ofIV estimates of returns to schooling. The main conclusions are the following: i) a reliability analysis of the reform coding finds a lower bound reliability estimate of 0.66-0.91; ii) the reform indeed raised educational attainment, more so for boys than for girls, and iii) with careful consideration of region-specific trends, the reform can be considered a valid instrument for education.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp87.pdf

Studying Abroad and the Effect on International Labor Market Mobility: Evidence from the Introduction of Erasmus

Matthias Parey Fabian Waldinger

CEEDP0086. August 2007.We investigate the e¤ect of studying abroad on international labor market mobility later in life for German university graduates. As a source of identifying variation, we exploit the introduction and expansion of the ERASMUS student exchange program, which significantly increases a student's probability of studying abroad. Using an Instrument Variable approach we control for unobserved heterogeneity between individuals who studied abroad and those who did not. Our results indicate that student exchange mobility is an important determinant of later international labor market mobility: We find that studying abroad increases an individual's probability of working in a foreign country by about 15 to 20 percentage points, suggesting that study abroad spells are an mportant channel to later outmigration. The results are robust to a number of specification checks.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp86.pdf

Educational Effects of Widening Access to the Academic Track: A Natural Experiment

Eric Maurin Sandra McNally

CEEDP0085. August 2007.It is difficult to know whether widening access to schools which provide a more academically oriented general education makes a difference to average educational achievement. We make use of reforms affecting admission to the ‘high ability’ track in Northern Ireland, but not England. The comparison of educational outcomes between Northern Ireland and England before and after the reform identifies the net effect of expanding the academic track to accommodate more students. This is composed of the direct effect of the more academic track on individual performance and the indirect effect arising on account of the change in peer group composition. Our paper is relevant to debate on the consequences of ability tracking and of expanding access to the academic track.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp85.pdf

Is Free School Meal Status a Valid Proxy for Socio-Economic Status (in Schools Research)?

Graham Hobbs Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0084. May 2007.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp84.pdf

Mobility and School Disruption

Steve Gibbons Shqiponja Telhaj

CEEDP0083. August 2007.We consider the influence that mobile pupils have on the academic achievements of other pupils in English primary schools. We find that immobile pupils in year-groups (à la US “grades”) that experience high pupil entry rates progress less well academically between ages 8 and 11 than pupils in low-mobility year groups (grades), even within the same school. The disruptive externalities of mobility are statistically significant, but actually very small in terms of their educational impact. An increase in annual entry rates from 0 to 10% (a 4 standard deviation change) would set the average incumbent pupil back by between 1 and 2 weeks, or about 4% of one standard deviation of the gain in pupil achievement between ages 7 and 11.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp83.pdf

Use IT or Lose IT? The Impact of Computers on Earnings

Peter Dolton Gerry Makepeace Helen Robinson

CEEDP0082. June 2007.The extent to which the impact of computer skills depends on how computers are used is investigated using British data from an establishment survey, cohort studies and the European E-Living survey. We examine the importance of activity and frequency of use in these various data sources. We find that the impact on earnings depends on which cohort of workers is examined and that there are differences over time. The regression results show that the use of computers for internet access and for email is positively significant across all of our datasets, although there are differences in the size of the effects between men and women.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp82.pdf

The Impact of Computer Use, Computer Skills and Computer Use Intensity: Evidence from WERS 2004.

Peter Dolton Panu Pelkonen

CEEDP0081. August 2007.Computers and ICT have changed the way we live and work. The latest WERS 2004 provides a snapshot of how using ICT at the workplace has changed our working lives. Various studies have suggested that the use of a computer at work boosted earnings by as much as 20%. Others suggest this reported impact is due to unobserved heterogeneity. Using excellent data from the WERS employer-employee matched data we compare OLS estimates with those from estimations which include controls for establishments, industrial sectors and occupations and use control function, treatment effects models and Instrumental Variable estimation. We show that the results of OLS estimation grossly overestimate the return to computer use but that including occupation controls, reduces the return to between 3-10%. We explore the return on different IT skills and also find a return to the intensity of computer use as measured by the number of tasks a computer is used for.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp81.pdf

Urban Density and Pupil Attainment

Steve Gibbons Olmo Silva

CEEDP0080. May 2007.We explore the association between urban density and pupil attainment using three cohorts of pupils in schooling in England. Although – as widely recognised – attainment in dense urban places is low on average, this is not because urban environments disadvantage pupils, but because the most disadvantaged pupils with low average attainments attend the most urbanised schools. To control for this, we exploit changes in urban density faced by pupils during compulsory transition from Primary to Secondary school, and measure educational progress at the end of the Secondary phase, relative to attainments at the end of Primary schooling. Our results suggest that there are small but significant benefits from education in schools in more densely urbanised settings: Pupils in schools in relatively dense places – measured in terms of school density and other urban indicators – progress faster than others in their cohort, but the elasticity is low, at around 0.02. We detect this density advantage even amongst pupils moving relatively short distances between Primary and Secondary schools within urban areas, so we cannot attribute it to broad urbanisation effects experienced by pupils making rural-urban school moves. A more likely explanation lies in greater school choice and competition between closely co-located educational providers.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp80.pdf

Over-Education and the Skills of UK Graduates

Arnaud Chevalier Joanne Lindley

CEEDP0079. August 2007.During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure for the appropriateness of the match between qualification and the job. We therefore define three groups of graduates: matched, apparently over-educated and genuinely over-educated; to compare pre- and post-expansion cohorts of graduates. We find the proportion of over-educated graduates has doubled, even though over-education wage penalties have remained stable. This suggests that the labour market accommodated most of the large expansion of university graduates. Apparently over-educated graduates are mostly undistinguishable from matched graduates, while genuinely over-educated graduates principally lack non-academic skills such as management and leadership. Additionally, genuine over-education increases unemployment by three months but has no impact of the number of jobs held. Individual unobserved heterogeneity differs between the three groups of graduates but controlling for it, does not alter these conclusions.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp79.pdf

The effects of higher education funding reforms on the lifetime incomes of graduates

Lorraine Dearden Emla Fitzsimons Alissa Goodman Greg Kaplan

CEEDP0078. January 2008.This paper undertakes a quantitative analysis of substantial reforms to the system of higher education (HE) finance first announced in 2004 and then revised again in July 2007. The reforms introduced deferred fees for HE, payable by graduates through the tax system in the form of income-contingent repayments on loans subsidised by the government. Lifetime earnings that have been simulated by the authors using innovative methods, are used to analyse the likely distributional consequences of the reforms for graduates. It is shown that graduates with low lifetime earnings will pay less for their HE than graduates higher up the lifetime earnings distribution compared to the system operating before the reforms. Taxpayers will bear substantial costs due to the interest rate and debt write-off subsidies. The extent to which the reforms are likely to shift the balance of funding for HE between the public and private sector is also analysed, as well as the likely distributional consequences of a number of variations to the system such as removing the interest subsidy from the loans.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp78.pdf

The Value of Basic Skills in the British Labour Market

Oscar Marcenaro Gutierrez Anna Vignoles Augustin de Coulon

CEEDP0077. May 2007.In this paper we evaluate the labour market value of basic skills in the UK, focusing on the wage and employment returns to having better literacy and numeracy skills. We draw on literacy and numeracy assessments undertaken by all cohort members of the UK 1970 British Cohort Study. The data used are very rich and allow us to account for potential ability bias, including as they do early childhood assessments of ability. We find that the literacy and numeracy effects on earnings are over and above any general effect on earnings from a person being more cognitively able. We also assess whether the value of basic skills, in terms of wage returns, has increased over time, using a cross cohort analysis based on the 1958 National Child Development Study cohort and the 1970 British Cohort Study. Our results show that literacy and numeracy skills retained their high value in the labour market over the period 1995-2004, despite numerous policy attempts to increase the supply of basic skills during this period.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp77.pdf

Resources and Standards in Urban Schools

Stephen Machin Sandra McNally Costas Meghir

CEEDP0076. February 2007.Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by considering an English education policy initiative - Excellence in Cities – which has been a flagship policy aimed at raising standards in inner-city secondary schools. We report results showing a positive impact of the extra resources on school attendance and performance in Mathematics (though not for English) but, interestingly, there is a marked heterogeneity in the effectiveness of the policy. Its greatest impact has been in more disadvantaged schools and on the performance of middle and high ability students within these schools. A simple cost-benefit calculation suggests the policy to be cost-effective. We conclude that additional resources can matter for children in the poorest secondary schools, particularly when building on a solid educational or ability background. However, small changes in resources have little or no effect on the ‘hard to reach’ children who have not achieved a sufficiently strong prior level.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp76.pdf

Higher Education Academic Salaries in the UK

Mark Collins Anna Vignoles James Walker

CEEDP0075. May 2007.The recent industrial action taken by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) has given the issue of academic pay high prominence in the UK press. There appears to be a remarkable consensus that higher education academic salaries are too low, relative to other groups of workers in the UK, and that this is leading to an academic ‘brain drain’. There is concern that this in turn will result in lower quality higher education, as universities fail to attract the ‘brightest and the best’. To rise above the rhetoric, there is a pressing need for robust evidence on relative academic salaries. In this paper, we compare the salaries of Higher Education teaching professionals in the United Kingdom with those of other comparable professionals. We offer evidence on relative salaries in HE academia over the last decade or so and we compare academic salaries to a range of different comparator groups, including some specific occupational groupings that one might view as more similar, in terms of unobserved characteristics, to academics. We then consider the extent to which the gap between the earnings of HE academics and that of other occupations is attributable to differences in the characteristics of academics, for example the fact that they are more highly educated on average, or to differences in the price paid for a given set of characteristics. We conclude that HE teaching professionals earn somewhat lower earnings than most public sector graduates and do particularly poorly compared to most other comparable professionals; they also work longer hours than most. In particular, academic earnings compare poorly to those in the legal professions, consultants physicians and dental practitioners (across both the public and private sectors). On the other hand, there are groups of public sector workers that do worse than HE academics, and in particular FE academics earn significantly less.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp75.pdf

The Long Term Impacts of Compulsory Schooling: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in School Leaving Dates

Emilia Del Bono Fernando Galindo-Rueda

CEEDP0074. January 2007.This paper investigates a unique feature of the English educational system to estimate the causal effect of compulsory schooling on labour market outcomes. We examine school leaving rules that allow for discrete variation in exit dates by date of birth within school cohorts. This natural experiment enables a regression discontinuity design that differences out confounding factors discussed in the literature. Individuals compelled to stay in school for as little as three months longer than their classmates tend to achieve significantly higher qualification levels and experience better labour market outcomes. Our analysis of variation of impacts by age of compulsory schooling allows us to provide valuable new insights on the role of education credentials in the labour market.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp74.pdf

Accounting for Intergenerational Income Persistence: Non-Cognitive Skills, Ability and Education

Jo Blanden Paul Gregg Lindsey Macmillan Lindsey Macmillan

CEEDP0073. September 2006.We analyse in detail the factors that lead to intergenerational persistence among sons, where this is measured as the association between childhood family income and later adult earnings. We seek to account for the level of income persistence in the 1970 BCS cohort and also to explore the decline in mobility in the UK between the 1958 NCDS cohort and the 1970 cohort. The mediating factors considered are cognitive skills, noncognitive traits, educational attainment and labour market attachment. Changes in the relationships between these variables, parental income and earnings are able to explain over 80% of the rise in intergenerational persistence across the cohorts.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp73.pdf

Faith Primary Schools: Better Schools or Better Pupils?

Steve Gibbons Olmo Silva

CEEDP0072. November 2006.We provide estimates of the effect of attending a Faith school on educational attainment progress during the Primary education phase in England. We argue that there are no credible instruments for Faith school attendance. Instead, we control for selection on religious schooling by tracking pupils over time and comparing attainments of students who exhibit different levels of commitment to religious education through their choice of Secondary school and residence. Our findings suggest that, once family preferences and selection into religious education are controlled for, Faith schools have only a very small effect on pupil educational progression in Primary school, this effect being between zero and under one-percentile on test scores at age 11, conditional on scores at age 7.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp72.pdf

Sheepskin or Prozac: The Causal Effect of Education on Mental Health

Arnaud Chevalier L Feinstein

CEEDP0071. August 2006.Mental illness is associated with large costs to individuals and society. Education improves various health outcomes but little work has been done on mental illness. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of education on mental health, we rely on a rich longitudinal dataset that contains health information from childhood to adulthood and thus allow us to control for fixed effects in mental health. We measure two health outcomes: malaise score and depression and estimate the extensive and intensive margins of education on mental health using various estimators. For all estimators, accounting for the endogeneity of education augments its protecting effect on mental health. We find that the effect of education is greater at mid-level of qualifications, for women and for individuals at greater risk of mental illness. The effects of education are observed at all ages, additionally education also reduces the transition to depression. These results suggest substantial returns to education in term of improved mental health.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp71.pdf

Using Rate of Return Analyses to Understand Sector Skill Needs

Nattavudh Powdthavee Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0070. July 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp70.pdf

Education, Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates

Arnaud Chevalier

CEEDP0069. August 2006.A large proportion of the gender wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, we investigate whether the unexplained component is due to misspecification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, we introduce variables on career expectations and character traits, variables that are typically not observed. The evidence indicates that women are more altruistic and less career-oriented than men. The main difference concerns career break expectations which explains 10% of the gender wage gap in our favoured model. By omitting attitudinal variables most studies are likely to over-estimate the unexplained component of the gender wage gap. Women with a more traditional view concerning childrearing are also found to have less intensive search behaviour. These results suggest that without a change in attitudes, the gender wage gap is likely to remain at its current level.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp69.pdf

Close Neighbours Matter: Neighbourhood Effects on Early Performance at School

Dominique Goux Eric Maurin

CEEDP0068. July 2006.Children’s outcomes are strongly correlated with those of their neighbours. The extent to which this is causal is the subject of an extensive literature. An identification problem exists because people with similar characteristics are observed to live in close proximity. Another major difficulty is that neighbourhoods measured in available data are often considerably larger than those which matter for outcomes (i.e. close neighbours). Several institutional features of France enable us to address these problems. We find that an adolescent’s performance at the end of junior high-school are strongly influenced by the performance of other adolescents in the neighbourhood.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp68.pdf

The Mobility of English School Children

Stephen Machin Shqiponja Telhaj Joan Wilson

CEEDP0067. May 2006.In this paper we examine links between pupil mobility and pupil and school characteristics at all levels of compulsory schooling in England. We derive measures of mobility from two academic years of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) data, a unique national administrative pupil level longitudinal data source. Our findings suggest that mobile pupils are more socially disadvantaged than non-mobile pupils and are significantly less likely to have a good prior education record. Moreover, we find that pupils are less likely to move if the school they attend has good average performance levels. Finally, when children move school, they are more likely to end up in a school with better Key Stage performance than the one they left, but this improvement is significantly more marked for children from better off backgrounds.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp67.pdf

Comprehensive Versus Selective Schooling in England and Wales: What Do We Know?

Alan Manning Jörn-Steffen Pischke

CEEDP0066. June 2006.British secondary schools moved from a system of extensive and early selection and tracking in secondary schools to one with comprehensive schools during the 1960s and 70s. Before the reform, students would take an exam at age eleven, which determined whether they would attend an academically oriented grammar school or a lower level secondary school. The reform proceeded at an uneven pace in different areas, so that both secondary school systems coexist during the 1960s and 70s. The British transition therefore provides an excellent laboratory for the study of the impact of a comprehensive versus a selective school system on student achievement. Previous studies analyzing this transition have typically used a value added methodology: they compare outcomes for students passing through either type of school controlling for achievement levels at the time of entering secondary education. While this seems like a reasonable research design, we demonstrate that it is unlikely to successfully eliminate selection effects in who attends what type of school. Very similar results are obtained by looking at the effect of secondary school environment on achievement at age 11 and controlling for age 7 achievement. Since children only enter secondary school at age 11, these effects are likely due to selection bias. Careful choice of treatment and control areas, and using political control of the county as an instrument for early implementation of the comprehensive regime do not solve this problem.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp66.pdf

Peer Effects in European Primary Schools: Evidence from PIRLS

Andreas Ammermueller Jörn-Steffen Pischke

CEEDP0065. May 2006.We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identificationrelies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primaryschools are formed roughly randomly with respect to family background. Similar to previousstudies, we find sizeable estimates of peer effects in standard OLS specifications. The size ofthe estimate is much reduced within schools. This could be explained either by selection intoschools or by measurement error in the peer background variable. When we correct formeasurement error we find within school estimates close to the original OLS estimates. Ourresults suggest that the peer effect is modestly large, measurement error is important in oursurvey data, and selection plays little role in biasing peer effects estimates. We find nosignificant evidence of non-linear peer effects.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp65.pdf

Are Schools Drifting Apart? Intake Stratification in English Secondary Schools

Steve Gibbons Shqiponja Telhaj

CEEDP0064. December 2006.The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest – in the US, UK and internationally – as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families’ freedom to choose amongst schools encourage divergence or convergence in the types of pupil different schools admit. Most attention has been focussed on segregation along lines of ethnic or social background. Yet, the real consideration that seems to be in the back of most people’s minds is the issue of segregation or stratification of schools along lines of pupil ability. We look explicitly at this issue using data on the population of pupils entering Secondary school in England from 1996 to 2002. Our study does highlight wide disparities between peer-group ability in different schools. But we also find that, contrary to popular opinion, almost nothing has changed over these years in terms of the way pupils of different age-11 abilities are sorted into different Secondary schools.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp64.pdf

Peer Effects and Pupil Attainment: Evidence from Secondary School Transition

Steve Gibbons Shqiponja Telhaj

CEEDP0063. May 2006.It is a common belief that children will thrive if educated amongst better class and schoolmates. It is a belief that guides many parents in their choice of school, and has important implications for policy on school choice and organisation. Many studies have tried to measure this ‘peer-group’ effect, but the enterprise is plagued by conceptual and empirical difficulties. In this study, we use the population of state Secondary school pupils in England to tease out how pupil attainments at age 14 respond to differences in the prior, age-11 attainments of their current school grade peer-group. Data on home addresses and school attendance allow us to compare outcomes of children who live in the same street, or who attended the same Primary school up to age 11, but then move on to different Secondary schools with different peer-group quality. These ‘peer-group’ effects seem to exist, but they are small in magnitude – a 1 s.d. increase in peer-group prior attainments allows a pupil to improve their own score by barely 0.08 of a standard deviation. We tackle various gnarly empirical problems arising in regression models of pupil attainments that incorporate individual and group prior attainments as explanatory variables. Estimates from such models are seriously biased by transient components in prior pupil attainments, correlation between current and prior peer-group characteristics and by ability sorting into Secondary schooling. We address these issues by using teachers predictions as instruments for prior attainments, defining a pupil’s current peer-group in terms of those school mates with whom he or she has had no contact in the past, and by predicting current peer-group attainments with the productivity of their origin Primary schools, measured by the gain in attainments of different cohorts between ages 7 and 11.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp63.pdf

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

Sandra E. Black Paul Devereux Kjell Salvanes

CEEDP0061. March 2006.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 haracteristics. By applying within twin techniques using a unique dataset from Norway, we xamine both short-run and long-run outcomes for the same cohorts. We find that birth weight does matter; very small short-run fixed effect estimates can be misleading because longer-run effects on outcomes such as height, IQ, earnings, and education are significant and similar in magnitude to OLS estimates. Our estimates suggest that eliminating birth weight differences between socio-economic groups would have sizeable effects on the later outcomes of children from poorer families.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp61.pdf

What Should an Index of School Segregation Measure?

Rebecca Allen Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0060. March 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp60.pdf

Which Skills Matter?

Pedro Carneiro Claire Crawford Alissa Goodman

CEEDP0059. July 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee%20dps/ceedp59.pdf

Gender and Student Achievement in English Schools

Stephen Machin Sandra McNally

CEEDP0058. February 2006.The widening gap between the average educational achievement of boys and girls has been the subject of much discussion. This gap is especially controversial for students taking national exams at the end of their compulsory education. However, the gender gap is also apparent at earlier and at later stages of education. In this paper, we analyse changes over time in the gender achievement gap at the different stages of compulsory education. We first use a combination of data sources to paint a picture of how gender gaps have evolved over time and in what context they are most marked. Then we consider possible explanations for the observed gender gaps. We look at the relevance of school inputs, teaching practice and the examination system for explaining the gender gap. We also discuss the potential influence of wider social and economic changes as reflected, for example, in the much higher education of mothers relative to those of previous generations. Analysis of this issue is important in the context of research on the gender wage gap. However, it is also raises policy-relevant issues in relation to whether changes in the school system can effect a change in the gender gap in educational achievement.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp58.pdf

Education Policy in the UK

Stephen Machin Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0057. March 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp57.pdf

Competition, Choice and Pupil Achievement

Steve Gibbons Steve Gibbons Stephen Machin Olmo Silva

CEEDP0056. January 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp56.pdf

New Technology in Schools: Is There a Payoff?

Stephen Machin Sandra McNally Olmo Silva

CEEDP0055. January 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp55.pdf

Zero Returns to Compulsory Schooling in Germany: Evidence and Interpretation

Jörn-Steffen Pischke Till von Wachter

CEEDP0054. January 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp54.pdf

Education Subsidies and School Drop-Out Rates

Lorraine Dearden Carl Emmerson Christine Frayne Costas Meghir Costas Meghir

CEEDP0053. January 2006.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp53.pdf

The Heterogeneous Effect of Selection in Secondary Schools: Understanding the Changing Role of Ability

Fernando Galindo-Rueda Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0052. June 2005.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp52.pdf

Should Research Universities be led by top researchers? Part 1: Are they?

Amanda Goodall

CEEDP0051. June 2005.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp51.pdf

The More the Merrier? The Effect of Family Size and Birth Order on Children's Education

S Black Paul Devereux Kjell Salvanes

CEEDP0050. June 2005.There is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a trade off between child quantity and quality within a family. However, there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory. Using a rich dataset on the entire population of Norway over an extended period of time, we examine the effects of family size and birth order on the educational attainment of children. While we find a negative correlation between family size and children's education, when we include indicators for birth order and/or use twin births as an instrument, family size effects become negligible. In addition, birth order has a significant and large negative effect on children's education. We also study adult earnings, employment, and teenage childbearing, and find strong evidence for birth order effects with these outcomes, particularly among women. These findings suggest the need to revisit economic models of fertility and child 'production', focusing not only on differences across families but differences within families as well.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp50.pdf

Vive la Revolution! Long term returns of 1968 to the angry students

Eric Maurin Sandra McNally

CEEDP0049. June 2005.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp49.pdf

The Role of Credit Constraints in Educational Choices: Evidence from NCDS and BCS70

Lorraine Dearden Leslie McGranahan Barbara Sianesi

CEEDP0048. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp48.pdf

Evaluating the Impact of Education on Earnings in the UK: Models, Methods and Results from the NCDS

Richard Blundell Lorraine Dearden Barbara Sianesi

CEEDP0047. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp47.pdf

An In-Depth Analysis of the Returns to National Vocational Qualifications Obtained at level 2

Lorraine Dearden Leslie McGranahan Barbara Sianesi

CEEDP0046. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp46.pdf

Returns to Education for the 'Marginal Learner': Evidence from the BCS70

Lorraine Dearden Leslie McGranahan Leslie McGranahan Barbara Sianesi

CEEDP0045. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp45.pdf

The Widening Socio-Economic Gap in UK Higher Education

Fernando Galindo-Rueda Oscar Marcenaro Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0044. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp44.pdf

The Literacy Hour

Stephen Machin Sandra McNally

CEEDP0043. December 2004.Literacy matters. One in five adults in the UK is not functionally literate and this has serious implications for their well-being and economic circumstances, as well as for national productivity. To ensure that this problem does not beset future generations, attention must be given to how best to educate the young to read and write. While economists have much to say about the influence of changing school resources on pupil attainment, there is very little economic research about the effect of changing the content and structure of teaching. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of "the literacy hour" in English primary schools on pupil attainment. This was first introduced in the context of the National Literacy Project (NLP) in September 1996, before it was implemented nationally from September 1998 onwards in the context of the National Literacy Strategy. The central idea is to raise standards of literacy in schools by improving the quality of teaching through more focused literacy instruction and effective classroom management. We evaluate the literacy hour for schools in the National Literacy Project (NLP), which was undertaken in about 400 English primary schools in the school years 1996-97 and 1997-98. We compare the reading and overall English attainment of children in NLP schools as compared to a set of control schools at the end of primary school education (age 11). We find a large increase in attainment in reading and English for pupils in NLP schools as compared to pupils not exposed to the literacy hour over this time period. A further aspect of this policy is its potential impact on the gender gap in pupil attainment. For many years, the attainment of boys in literacy-related activities has been considerably lower than that of girls. We find some evidence that at age 11, boys received a greater benefit from the literacy hour than girls. Finally, we consider the cost-effectiveness of the policy. The benefits of the policy (in terms of standard deviations) are comparable to much more expensive policies such as a class size reduction. We estimate the wage return likely to arise from the increase in reading attainment as a consequence of the literacy hour. The per-pupil cost of the NLP is only a small fraction of the estimated benefits. Hence, the policy is extremely cost effective. These findings are of strong significance when placed into the wider education debate about what works best in schools for improving pupil performance. The evidence reported here suggests that public policy aimed at changing the content and structure of teaching can significantly raise pupil attainment.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp43.pdf

Paying for primary schools: supply constraints, school popularity or congestion?

Steve Gibbons Stephen Machin

CEEDP0042. December 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp42.pdf

Family Income and Educational Attainment: A Review of Approaches and Evidence for Britain

Jo Blanden Paul Gregg

CEEDP0041. September 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp41.pdf

Parental Education and Child's Education: A Natural Experiment

Arnaud Chevalier

CEEDP0040. September 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp40.pdf

Women, Lifelong Learning and Employment

Andrew Jenkins

CEEDP0039. September 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp39.pdf

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Specialist Schools

Andrew Jenkins Rosalind Levacic

CEEDP0038. September 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp38.pdf

Regional Variations in Adult Learning and Vocational Training: Evidence from NCDS and WERS 98

Andrew Jenkins Alison Wolf

CEEDP0037. January 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp37.pdf

The Labour Market Impact of Adult Education and Training: A cohort analysis

L Feinstein Fernando Galindo-Rueda Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0036. January 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp36.pdf

Further Analysis of the Returns to Academic and Vocational Qualifications

Steven McIntosh

CEEDP0035. January 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp35.pdf

The Impact of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence from the German short school years

Jörn-Steffen Pischke

CEEDP0034. January 2004.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp34.pdf

Does it pay to attend a prestigious university?

Arnaud Chevalier Gavan Conlon

CEEDP0033. May 2003.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp33.pdf

Class Ridden or Meritocratic? An Economic Analysis of Recent Changes in Britain

Fernando Galindo-Rueda Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0032. May 2003.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp32.pdf

Employer Learning and Schooling-Related Statistical Discrimination in Britain

Fernando Galindo-Rueda

CEEDP0031. May 2003.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp31.pdf

Are Education Subsides an Efficient Redistributive Device?

Robert Dur Coen Teulings

CEEDP0030. May 2003.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/ceedp30.pdf

The Growth of Psychometric Testing for Selection Why Has Test Use Increased,Will Growth Continue, and What Does This Mean for Education?

Andrew Jenkins Alison Wolf

CEEDP0029. June 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP29.pdf

Monotonicity and the Roy Model

Arnaud Chevalier Gauthier Lanot

CEEDP0028. June 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP28.pdf

Why Do Employers Use Selection Tests? Evidence from British Workplaces

Andrew Jenkins Alison Wolf

CEEDP0027. June 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP27.pdf

Changes in Intergenerational Mobility in Britain

Jo Blanden Alissa Goodman Paul Gregg Stephen Machin

CEEDP0026. June 2002.This paper flatly contradicts the common view that anyone can make it in modern Britain. Indeed, rather then weakening, the link between an individual's earnings and those of his or her parents has strengthened. An important part of the explanation is that the expansion of higher education has benefited people from rich families much more than those from poor families. The extent of intergenerational mobility is frequently seen as a measure of the degree of equality of opportunity in society and considerable research has been devoted to obtaining an accurate estimate of it for a number of countries. However little is known about how these connections have altered through time. Sharp increases in educational attainment and rises in earnings (and living standards in general) in more recent generations mean that many observers seem to think that we now live in a more mobile, meritocratic society than in the past. Contrary to this, this research seems to show that where you come from matters more now than in the past. It appears that the extent of intergenerational mobility has actually fallen. The research uses unique data that follow two cohorts of children (one born in 1958, one born in 1970) through childhood and into adulthood. The latest data, collected in 2000, make it possible, for the first time, for researchers to get a good measure of the adult earnings of the second cohort. The key findings are: [1]The connection between earnings and parental income has strengthened for the more recent cohort. Estimates of the relationship between childhood family income and son's adult earnings show that for the 1958 cohort, a son from a family with twice as much income as a second family will earn about 12 percent more in his early thirties than a son from the second family. In the 1970 cohort, the same figure is 25 percent. Therefore, the degree of intergenerational transmission has risen by 13 percentage points. Results for daughters are very similar; [2] Part of the fall in mobility across generations is due to the fact that the expansion of the higher education system has benefited people from rich fa milies much more than those from poor families. This is particularly the case for daughters. The results show that differences in educational attainment across family background have led to a decline in equality of opportunity. This is despite the large expansion in postcompulsory schooling that occurred between the two cohorts. This may be unexpected to some observers, who see great gains in education and earnings from one generation to another and leave the story there. - But these gains have been unequally distributed across society. The majority of beneficiaries have been children from families who were already doing well. If, as seems to have happened, able children from lower income families are excluded from the expansion of education, this will lower national productivity and income in the long run. The implication for government policy is clear. If equality of opportunity is a serious goal of government, it can be facilitated in a way that can enhance economic welfare via policies directed at high ability children whose parents are doing less well.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP26.pdf

Geography, Resources and Primary School Performance

Steve Gibbons

CEEDP0025. June 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP25.pdf

Participation in Post Compulsory Education in England: What explains the Boom and Bust

Damon Clark

CEEDP0024. April 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP24.pdf

Britain''s Record on Skills

Richard Layard Steven McIntosh Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0023. May 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP23.pdf

Returns to Education: Evidence from UK Twins

Dorothe Bonjour Lynn Cherkas Jonathan Haskel Denise Hawkes Tim Spector

CEEDP0022. April 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP22.pdf

Recruiting and Retaining Teachers in the UK: An Analysis of Graduate Occupation Choice from the 1960s to the 1990s

Arnaud Chevalier Peter Dolton Steven McIntosh

CEEDP0021. November 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP21.pdf

The Determinants of Undertaking Academic and Vocational Qualifications in the UK

Gavan Conlon

CEEDP0020. February 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP20.pdf

The Determinants and Effects of Lifelong Learning

Fernando Galindo-Rueda Andrew Jenkins Anna Vignoles Alison Wolf

CEEDP0019. April 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP19.pdf

Neighbourhood Effects on Educational Achievement

Steve Gibbons

CEEDP0018. February 2002.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP18.pdf

Paying for good neighbours? Neighbourhood deprivation and the communiy benefits of education

Steve Gibbons

CEEDP0017. October 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP17.pdf

Estimating the Returns to Education: Models, Methods and Results

Lorraine Dearden Barbara Sianesi

CEEDP0016. October 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP16.pdf

Valuing Primary Schools

Steve Gibbons Stephen Machin

CEEDP0015. September 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP15.pdf

The effect of a social experiment in education

Costas Megir Martin Palme

CEEDP0014. May 2001.The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education reform in Sweden which was implemented in the 60s. The reform was preceded by a “social experiment" in which only a proportion of municipalities received the new school system. We use survey data linked with tax records covering 10% of one of the cohorts who were educated during the experimental period, to evaluate the impact of the reform on educational attainment and earnings. We find significant increases in the educational attainment of individuals from poorer backgrounds. We also find that the largest impact on earnings was for higher ability individuals from poorer backgrounds. In addition we estimate the returns to education for those affected by the reform. By exploiting the differential impact of the reform by county we are able, in some cases, to distinguish its direct effect on earnings from the effect it had by increasing the quantity of education. We find that the main source of increased earnings came from increasing educational attainment.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP14.pdf

The incidence and outcomes associated with the late attainment of qualifications in the United Kingdom

Gavan Conlon

CEEDP0013. July 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP13.pdf

Companies use of psychometric testing and the changing demand for skills: A review of the literature

Andrew Jenkins

CEEDP0012. June 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP12.pdf

The differential in earnings premia between academically and vocationally trained males in the United Kingdom

Gavan Conlon

CEEDP0011. June 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP11.pdf

The effective use of student time: A stochastic frontier production function case study

Peter Dolton Oscar Marcenaro Lucia Navarro

CEEDP0010. June 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP10.pdf

Over education in the graduate labour market: Some evidence from alumni data

Peter Dolton

CEEDP0009. June 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP09.pdf

The relative effect of family and financial characteristics on educational echievement

Arnaud Chevalier Gauthier Lanot

CEEDP0008. April 2001.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP08.pdf

Graduate over-education in the UK

Arnaud Chevalier

CEEDP0007. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP07.pdf

The Returns to Education: A Review of the Macro-Economic Literature

Barbara Sianesi John Van Reenen

CEEDP0006. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP06.pdf

The Returns to Education: A Review of Evidence, Issues and Deficiencies in the Literature

Colm Harmon Hessel Oosterbeek

CEEDP0005. December 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP05.pdf

The Returns to Academic and Vocational Qualifications in Britain

Lorraine Dearden Steven McIntosh Michal Myck Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0004. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP04.pdf

Measuring and Assessing the Impact of Basic Skills on Labour Market Outcomes

Steven McIntosh Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0003. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP03.pdf

The Relationship between Resource Allocation and Pupil Attainment: A Review

Rosalind Levacic Stephen Machin David Reynolds Anna Vignoles James Walker

CEEDP0002. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP02.pdf

An Audit of the Data Needs of the DfEE Centres on the Economics of Education and the Wider Benefits of Learning

Tanvi Desai Estela Montado Anna Vignoles

CEEDP0001. November 2000.

Full discussion paper: http://cee.lse.ac.uk/cee dps/CEEDP01.pdf