What kind of schools parents choose when they have more options? Effects of school transport subsidies

Andrés Ramírez-Hassan, Gustavo García Cruz (), Estefanía Saravia, Juan Fernando Duque and Daniel Londoño
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Andrés Ramírez Hassan ()

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 2023, vol. 87, issue PA

Abstract: It seems that facilitating access to a higher spectrum of schools implies that students will attend higher quality schools, as measured by students’ end-of-class test scores. We test this hypothesis showing new evidence for the effects of school transport subsidies targeting low-income students on school choice in the context of a developing country (Colombia) using a unique panel dataset involving a public-school population with approximately 15 million records. We built a creative instrument deducing unobserved optimal commute decisions, which seems to satisfy the exclusion and relevance conditions, and we found by means of two-stage least squares that metro and bus subsidy beneficiaries choose statistically and economically significantly better schools, approximately a 33% and 37% improvement in the quality school index, respectively. In addition, we found using endogenous ordered probit models that these subsidies increase the probability of attending very high-quality schools by 59% and 94% for the representative beneficiary, respectively. These results suggest that the reduction of costs of transport not only increases accessibility and the set of school choices among low-income students, but also targets students enrolled in better quality schools. Therefore, the local government should increase efforts to get more subsidies targeting uncovered areas.

Keywords: School transport subsidy; School choice; School quality; Public transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H25 I20 I21 O18 O54 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceps:v:87:y:2023:i:pa:s0038012123000022

DOI: 10.1016/j.seps.2023.101509

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