The Long-term Effects of School Quality on Labor Market Outcomes and Educational Attainment

Christian Dustmann, Patrick Puhani and Uta Schönberg ()
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Uta Schönberg: University College London, Institute for Employment Research (IAB)
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Uta Schoenberg

No 1208, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin)

Abstract: We study the long-term causal effects of attending a "better" school - defined as one with more advanced peers, more highly paid teachers, and a more academic curriculum - on the highest degree completed, wages, occupational choice, and unemployment. We base our analysis on a regression discontinuity design, generated by a school entry age rule, that assigns students to different types of schools based on their date of birth. We find that, even though our case involves larger inter-school differences in peer quality and teaching curricula than in most previous studies, the long-term effect of school quality is very small and not significantly different from zero. This surprising finding is partly explainable by the substantial amount of student up- and downgrading between schools of varying quality at the end of middle school (age 15/16) and at the end of high school (age 18/19). This suggests that giving people a "second chance" during their education can make up for several years of schooling with a less challenging peer group and a less challenging teaching curriculum.

Keywords: School quality; peer effects; regression discontinuity design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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