Trends in Cognitive Skill Inequalities by Socio-Economic Status across Canada

Catherine Haeck and Pierre Lefebvre

Canadian Public Policy, 2021, vol. 47, issue 1, 88-116

Abstract: In this article, we document the trends in cognitive skills gaps across Canada. We use Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test scores over seven cycles, from 2000 to 2018, to provide an exhaustive portrait of the trends in the test score distribution over time and the score gaps by parental socio-economic status (SES). We find that the achievement gap between top-performing students (90th percentile) and students facing challenges (10th percentile) is large and represents more than four years of schooling. We also show that socio-economic differences in PISA scores for reading, mathematics, and science are large but generally stable over time. There are variations in SES score gaps by province, a proxy for the extent of inequality of opportunities, but these variations are not large.

Keywords: Canadian provinces; education attainment gradients; literacy and numeracy skills; PISA; socio-economic inequalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2019-039 (text/html)
access restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:47:y:2021:i:1:p:88-116

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).