School segregation, school choice and educational policies in 100 Hungarian towns

Gabor Kertesi and Gabor Kezdi

No 1312, Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: The distribution of Roma and non-Roma students across schools has become considerably more unequal in Hungary since the 1980's. This paper analyzes the effect of school choice and local educational policies on that inequality, known as school segregation, in 100 Hungarian towns. We combine administrative data with data from a survey that we collected from municipality administrations with respect to local educational policies and the ethnic composition of neighborhoods. Our results indicate that in Hungarian towns, free school choice diminishes the role of residential distribution because many students commute to schools of their choice. Towns where such commuting is more pronounced are characterized by stronger inter-school inequalities. We also find that local educational policies have, on average, somewhat segregationist tendencies, though there is substantial heterogeneity across towns. The more segregationist the local policies are, the higher the segregation in the town, thus suggesting that local policies have room to influence school segregation in this system. However, the impact of local educational policies is weaker than the role of school choice.

Keywords: School segregation; Roma minority; school choice; local educational policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I28 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 135 pages
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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