Evidence of neighborhood e?ects on educational performance in the chilean school voucher system

Dante Contreras and Patricia Medrano

Working Papers from University of Chile, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper uses alternative measures of neighborhood quality to study its impact on student performance in school. The Chilean voucher-based education system allows us to test separately for neighborhood and traditional in-classroom peer effects, which have been traditionally empha- sized by the literature. We use the Human Development Index reported by United Nations, and the relative number of books in public libraries at the county level, to measure neighborhood quality. We ?nd that a 5 basis point increase in the HDI Index, is related to an increase of 1 to 4 points in the SIMCE test, depending on the speci?cation. The e?ect is equivalent to half a year increase in mothers education (one additional year achieves a 7 point increase in SIMCE scores). Interestingly, the e?ect remains when we look at the sample of random movers.

JEL-codes: J18 O18 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-lam and nep-ure
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