Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence

Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse and Pia Pinger

No 20915, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Inequality of opportunity occurs when two children with the same academic performance are sent to different quality schools because their parents differ in socio-economic status. Based on a novel dataset for Germany, we demonstrate that children are significantly less likely to enter the academic track if they come from a low socio-economic status (SES) family, even after conditioning on prior measures of school performance. We then provide causal evidence that a low-intensity mentoring program can improve long-run education outcomes of low SES children and reduce inequality of opportunity. Low SES children who were randomly assigned to a mentor for one year are 20 percent more likely to enter a high track program. The mentoring relationship affects both parents and children and has positive long-term implications for children's educational trajectories. We show that the effects are both enduring and scalable.

JEL-codes: C90 I24 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
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