Free Schooling Reverses Sibling Rivalry

João Ferreira and Wayne Sandholtz

No 17228, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use administrative data to measure sibling spillovers on academic performance before and after Tanzania's introduction of Free Secondary Education (FSE). Prior to FSE, students whose older siblings narrowly passed the secondary school entrance exam were less likely to go to secondary school themselves; with FSE, the effect became positive. Negative spillovers in the pre-reform period were concentrated in poorer regions; positive spillovers in the post-reform period were largest for lower-performing younger siblings. This suggests that FSE alleviated financial constraints, allowing families to distribute educational investments more equitably rather than concentrating resources on high-performing children.

Keywords: sibling spillovers; educational achievement; resource constraints; high-stakes exams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I20 I25 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2024-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17228.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Sibling Spillovers and Free Schooling (2024)
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:iza:izadps:dp17228

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().