The Effect of Class-size Reduction on Students’ Well-Being in School

Soichiro Sugita
Additional contact information
Soichiro Sugita: Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

No DP2025-012, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: The empirical literature on the causal effects of class-size reduction on academic outcomes is crowded and yields mixed results, with particularly limited and inconsistent findings in the Japanese context. This study examines whether smaller class sizes enhance classroom climate and student-teacher relationships, using large-scale panel data from a student achievement survey conducted in a Japanese prefecture. Employing an instrumental variable approach based on the Maimonides rule, I find that a reduction of 10 students per class yields modest improvements—up to 0.07 standard deviations—in measures of teacher-student relationships. The analysis does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that class-size reduction is effective in improving students’ well-being.

Keywords: Well-Being; Class-size reduction; Instrumental Variable Approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2025-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ies.keio.ac.jp/upload/DPDP2025-012_EN.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
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:keo:dpaper:dp2025-012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University ().