Long-Term Effects of Class Size

Peter Fredriksson, Björn Öckert and Hessel Oosterbeek

No 5879, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper evaluates the long-term effects of class size in primary school. We use rich administrative data from Sweden and exploit variation in class size created by a maximum class size rule. Smaller classes in the last three years of primary school (age 10 to 13) are not only beneficial for cognitive test scores at age 13 but also for non-cognitive scores at that age, for cognitive test scores at ages 16 and 18, and for completed education and wages at age 27 to 42. The estimated effect on wages is much larger than any indirect (imputed) estimate of the wage effect, and is large enough to pass a cost-benefit test.

Keywords: cognitive skills; non-cognitive skills; educational attainment; regression discontinuity; class size; earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 I21 I28 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2011-07
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)

Published - published in: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, 128 (1), 249-285

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5879.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Long-Term Effects of Class Size (2013)
Working Paper: Long-term effects of class size (2012)
Working Paper: Long-term effects of class size (2012)
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:dp5879

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 ().