Parents' Beliefs about Their Children's Academic Ability: Implications for Educational Investments

Rebecca Dizon-Ross

American Economic Review, 2019, vol. 109, issue 8, 2728-65

Abstract: Schools worldwide distribute information to parents about their children's academic performance. Do frictions prevent parents, particularly low-income parents, from accessing this information to make decisions? A field experiment in Malawi shows that, at baseline, parents' beliefs about their children's academic performance are often inaccurate. Providing parents with clear, digestible performance information causes them to update their beliefs and adjust their investments: they increase the school enrollment of their higher-performing children, decrease the enrollment of lower-performing children, and choose educational inputs that are more closely matched to their children's academic level. Heterogeneity analysis suggests information frictions are worse among the poor.

JEL-codes: C93 D83 I21 I24 J13 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20171172
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (99)

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