Inequality in Incomes and Access to Education. A Cross-Country Analysis (1960-90)

In the current debate on the relationship between inequality in income distribution and growth one of the possible link works through the access to education. After reviewing this debate, a formal model show how the imperfection of financial markets makes educational choices dependent on the distribution of family incomes. This leads to two testable predictions in the analysis of aggregate data on school enrolments: a negative (linear) dependence on Gini concentration index on incomes distribution; and a positive dependence on public resources invested in education and/or on skill premium in the labour market. This predictions are then tested on a (unbalanced) panel of 102 countries for the period 1960-90. The main findings of this analysis are that, once we control for the degree of development with the (log of) per capita output, financial constraints seem mainly relevant in limiting the access to secondary education. However, when considering gender differences, there is evidence that female participation to education is more strongly conditioned by family wealth, starting from primary education. On the contrary there is no clear evidence of a relevant impact of invested resources, but at the tertiary level.

School Quality and Family Background in Italy

We study if the combined significant reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio and increase in parental education observed in Italy between the end of IIWW and the end of 1980s had a significant impact on the educational attainment and labor market returns of a representative sample of Italians born between 1941 and 1970. We find that the lower pupil-teacher ratio is positively correlated with higher educational attainment, but that the overall improvement of parental education has had an even stronger impact on attainment. We find that the positive impact of better school quality on educational attainment and returns to education has been particularly significant for individuals born in regions and cohorts with poorer family background. Parental education has had asymmetric effects, positive on attainment and negative on school returns. Better school quality also had asymmetric effects on the returns to education, positive for individuals with poor family background and negative for individuals born in regions and cohorts with relatively high parental education. Our evidence suggests that better school quality, measured by a lower pupil-teacher ratio, is a technical substitute to parental education in the production of individual human capital. When school quality and family background are substitutes, an increase of public resources invested in education can be used to reduce the differences induced by parental education.Schhol quality, Family Background

Intergenerational Mobility and Schooling Decisions in Germany and Italy: the Impact of Secondary School Tracks.

Intergenerational mobility in income and education is affected by the influence of parents on children's school choices. Our focus is on the role played by different school systems in reducing or magnifying the impact of parents on children's school choices and therefore on intergenerational mobility in general. We compare two apparently similar educational systems, Italy and Germany, to see how the common feature of separate tracks at Secondary School level may produce different impacts on children choices. Using data from a cross-country survey (PISA 2003), we study the impact of parental education on track choice, showing that the greater flexibility of the Italian system (where parents are free to choose the type of track) translates into greater dependence from parental background. These effects are reinforced when moving to post-secondary education, where the aspiration to go to college is affected not only by the school type but also (in the case of Italy only) by parental education. We then move to country-specific data sets (ISTAT 2001 for Italy and GSOEP 2001 and 2002 for Germany) to study the impact of family background on post-secondary school choices: we find this impact is greatly reduced when we control for secondary school tracks. Overall, we estimate large asymmetries by gender, with women's behavior more independent from family backgrounds than men's behavior.gender Secondary School tracks; Education; Intergenerational Mobility

School Choice and Quality

The 1993 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a representative survey of the Italian population covering 24,000 individuals, reports detailed information on children's attendance of public and private schools and parents' assessments of the quality of public schools in the city of residence. The survey also provides detailed information on the household's demographic structure, income and parents' education. The empirical analysis indicates that the quality of schools is one of the driving factors in the choice between private and public schools. The results are robust with respect to the particular quality indicator used and the presence of fixed provincial effects

Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD

We examine the determinants of differences across countries and over time in the distribution of personal incomes in the OECD. The Gini coefficient of personal incomes can be expressed as a function of the wage differential, the labour share, and the unemployment rate, hence labour market institutions are an essential determinant of the distribution of income, although the sign of their impact is ambiguous. We use a panel of OECD countries for the period 1970-96 to examine these effects. We find, first, that the labour share remains an important determinant of overall inequality patterns, and, second, that stronger unions and a more generous unemployment benefit tend to reduce income inequality. High capital-labour ratios also emerge as a strong equalising factor, which has in part offset the impact of increasing wage inequality on the US distribution of personal incomes.income inequality, labour share, trade unions

Private school quality in Italy

Private school enrolment may lead to worse subsequent performance in further education or in the labour market. If students differ in their ability not only to pay but to take advantage of educational opportunities (“talent” for short), private schools attract a worse pool of students when publicly funded schools are better suited to foster progress by more talented students. In the data we analyze, the impact of observable talent proxies on educational and labour market outcomes is indeed more positive for students who (endogenously) choose to attend public schools than for those who choose to pay for private education

Inequality in Incomes and Access to Education. A Cross-Country Analysis (1960-95)

In the current debate on the relationship between inequality in income distribution and growth one of the possible link works through the access to education. After reviewing this debate, a formal model shows how the imperfection of financial markets makes educational choices dependent on the distribution; and a positive dependence on public resources invested in education and/or on skill for the period 1960-95. The main findings of this analysis are that, once we control for the degree of development with the (log of) per capita output, financial constraints seems mainly relevant in limiting the access to secondary education. Finally, there is weak evidence that public resources spent on education raise the enrolment rates.

Should You Compete or Cooperate with Your Schoolmates?

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the overall achievement. A cooperative learning approach may instead emerge when competitive behaviour is negatively evaluated by schoolmates, especially when the class is more homogeneous in terms of students’ characteristics (e.g., ability). Empirical evidence supporting our model is found using the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey on students’ literacy levels. A competitive learning approach has a positive individual return (higher in comprehensive educational systems), while student performance increases with the average cooperative behaviour, particularly in tracked educational systems.cooperation, competition, PISA, student attitudes

Does the Expansion of Higher Education Increase the Equality of Educational Opportunities? Evidence from Italy

This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. It examines Italy’s experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in neighbouring provinces. Our analysis focuses on non-mature full-time students and the results suggest that the expansion might have had only limited effects in terms of reducing existing individual inequality in HE achievement as the greater availability of courses had a significantly positive impact only on the probability of university enrolment but not on that of obtaining a university degree.Italy, higher education, family background