Commuting to educational opportunity? School choice effects of mass transit expansion in Mexico City

Andrew Dustan and Diana K.L. Ngo

Economics of Education Review, 2018, vol. 63, issue C, 116-133

Abstract: School choice policies aim to increase educational access by weakening the link between a student’s residence and his choice set, but long commutes and other barriers may constrain families from selecting otherwise-desirable schools. Leveraging a mass transit expansion in Mexico City’s suburbs as a natural experiment, we find that a new train raised demand for elite and more distant schools, but only among high-achieving students with highly-educated parents. These students were also more likely to be assigned to elite and more distant schools under the test-based assignment mechanism. In contrast, we find little effect on the choices or assignments of low-achievers or those with lower-education parents. These results highlight the complementarities between transit access and school choice as well as the potential limitations of choice policies in large urban areas.

Keywords: Mass transit; School choice; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I25 O18 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:63:y:2018:i:c:p:116-133

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.01.006

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