Essays on the impact of education on misclassified civic outcomes: studies of Italy and the UK

In this dissertation I examine the impact of education on a range of civic outcomes in Italy and the UK which embody two of the main dimensions of social capital: civic engagement and social trust. The central aim of this thesis is to attain a credible re- lationship between education and civic outcomes, accounting for diverse issues which may obscure it. Namely, unobservables driving education choices (i.e., endogeneity), and the tendency to under-report sensitive topics and over-report civic opinions (i.e., misclassi�cation). This approach allows me to ascertain the extent to which the causal e�ect of schooling on the civic indicators is either genuine or is driven mainly by endogeneity and a systematic misreporting by educational levels. I also investigate how these elements vary by contextual factors of the two countries. The contribution in this area is given by utilizing data from these two countries, considering a distinct group of civic outcomes (i.e., civic opinions and civic behaviours) and by dealing with misreporting. Previous research does not explicitly control for misclassi�cation and focuses on civic engagement, one aspect of social capital. Furthermore, I con- tribute by introducing a hurdle ordered probit with misclassi�cation to account for two issues regarding the distribution of a self-reported ordered outcome, its skewness and its misclassi�cation. The main �ndings are: (i) for Italy, qualitative overall con- clusions regarding the causality of education on civic outcomes are indeed a�ected when accounting for misclassi�cation: education turns out to be insigni�cant across civic behaviours, (ii) for the UK, on the contrary, education has signi�cant positive e�ects on all civic outcomes due to upward biases induced by endogeneity, (iii) both Italy and the UK, however, do not di�er substantially overall with regards to misre- porting: most civic outcomes are misclassi�ed for either country, and misreporting is more severe for civic behaviours due to a larger in uence of social desirability

Preschool attendance: a multilevel analysis of individual and community factors in 21 low and middle-income countries

This paper investigates how preschool attendance is shaped by individual and community factors for 71,806 children from 14,303 communities in 21 low-to middle-income countries using a multilevel analysis. We assess how these mechanisms vary by community and country wealth and the extent to which the variation of preschool uptake can be explained by the characteristics of children living in these communities. We find that of the total variation, 36% was attributable to communities and 12% to countries, with childrens demographic and socioeconomics characteristics explaining 23% of the between community variation. Community wealth and health are crucial determinants; in poor communities with high stunting rates, the chances of preschool attendance are at least halved. Our results suggest that the effect of community on preschool attendance is stronger in poorer countries with greater inequality between communities

Background and methodological note for the Spatial Education Inequalities

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On the impact of early marriage on schooling outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa and South West Asia

This paper examines the effect of age of marriage on women's schooling outcomes for 36 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and South West Asia. We employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of early marriage driven by socio-economic and cultural factors. Our results show that delaying early marriage by one year is associated with an increase of half a year of education in Sub-Saharan Africa and nearly one third of a year of education in South West Asia as well as a lower likelihood of dropping out from secondary school of 5.5% in South West Asia