The effect of ordinal rank in school on educational achievement and income in Sweden

Iman Dadgar ()
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Iman Dadgar: Center for educational leadership and excellence, Stockholm School of Economics, Swedish institute for Social research (SOFI), Stockholm University

No 2025:21, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: This study examines the influence of students’ ordinal positions in the distribution of grades in their ninth-grade school cohort on subsequent educational and labor market outcomes using population-wide data for Sweden. The identification strategy uses differences between students’ ranks in their school and their ranks in the country-wide ability distribution after conditioning on school-cohort fixed effects and school-level grade distributions. The findings reveal an advantage of occupying a higher rank in school with respect to educational and labor market accomplishments in adulthood, whereas a lower rank yields adverse consequences. Contrary to findings from the United States, no effect is found for students situated in the middle of the rank distribution. This study also shows that ordinal rank effects are more pronounced for students with lower socio-economic status and for female students at the top of their school ability distribution. This study highlights the importance of students’ rank positions in determining their future academic and professional outcomes.

Keywords: education; income; ordinal rank; peer effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2025-11-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-lab
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