Determinants of academic attainment in the United States: A quantile regression analysis of test scores

Getinet Haile and Anh Nguyen ()

Education Economics, 2007, vol. 16, issue 1, 29-57

Abstract: We investigate the determinants of high school students' academic attainment in mathematics, reading and science in the United States; focusing particularly on possible differential impacts of ethnicity and family background across the distribution of test scores. Using data from the NELS2000 and employing quantile regression, we find two important results. First, the gaps in mathematics, reading and science test scores among ethnic groups vary across the conditional quantiles of the measured test scores. Specifically, Blacks and Hispanics tend to fare worse in their attainment at higher quantiles, particularly in science. Secondly, the effects of family background factors such as parental education and father's occupation also vary across quantiles of the test score distribution. The implication of these findings is that the influence racial and family background factors may have on academic attainment, which are commonly identified on the basis of a conditional mean distribution of test scores, may not tell the whole story the attainment discourse has to note.

Keywords: educational attainment; quantile regression; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09645290701523218 (text/html)
Access to full text is 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:taf:edecon:v:16:y:2007:i:1:p:29-57

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645290701523218

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().