Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence

Armin Falk, Fabian Kosse () and Pia Pinger
Additional contact information
Fabian Kosse: LMU Munich

No 2020-046, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Inequality of opportunity strikes 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 low socio-economic status (SES) families, 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.

Keywords: mentoring; childhood intervention programs; education; human capital investment; inequality of opportunity; socioeconomic status (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 I24 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
Note: ECI, IP
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Falk_K ... school-decisions.pdf First version, June 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2020-046

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