Smart but unhappy: independent-school competition and the wellbeing-efficiency trade-off in education

We study whether independent-school competition involves a trade-off between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, we analyse data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiting historical Catholic opposition to state schooling for exogenous variation in independent-school enrolment shares. We find that independent-school competition decreases pupil wellbeing but raises achievement and lowers educational costs. Our analysis and balancing tests indicate these findings are causal. In addition, we find several mechanisms behind the trade-off, including more traditional teaching and stronger parental achievement pressure

Retirement blues

This paper analyses the short- and longer-term effects of retirement on mental health in ten European countries. It exploits thresholds created by state pension ages in an individual-fixed effects instrumental-variable set-up, borrowing intuitions from the regression-discontinuity design literature, to deal with endogeneity in retirement behaviour. The results display no short-term effects of retirement on mental health, but a large negative longer-term impact. This impact survives a battery of robustness tests, and applies to women and men as well as people of different educational and occupational backgrounds similarly. Differences compared with previous research are attributed to the study's differentiation of short- and longer-term effects as well as its research design. Overall, the paper's findings suggest that reforms inducing people to postpone retirement are not only important for making pension systems solvent, but with time could also pay a mental health dividend among the elderly and reduce public health care costs

Causal inference in social policy evidence from education, health, and immigration

Separating causation from correlation in empirical studies is crucial for drawing the right conclusions for social-policy development. In the last decade, the emergence of increasingly sophisticated econometric techniques has opened up new ways to draw causal inferences in studies analysing observational data. This thesis contains four papers employing such techniques to answer important research questions in three different areas of social policy: education, health, and immigration. The first paper analyses the impact of retirement on mental health in ten European countries. It exploits thresholds created by state-pension ages in an individual-fixed effects instrumental-variable set-up, borrowing intuitions from the regressiondiscontinuity design literature, to deal with endogeneity in retirement behaviour. The results display no short-term effects of retirement on mental health, but a large negative longer-term impact. This impact survives a battery of robustness tests, and applies to women and men as well as people of different educational and occupational backgrounds similarly. The findings suggest that reforms inducing people to postpone retirement are not only important for making pension systems solvent, but with time could also pay a mental-health dividend among the elderly and reduce public health-care costs. The second paper studies whether independent-school competition involves a tradeoff between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, it analyses data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiting historical Catholic opposition to state schooling for exogenous variation in independent-school enrolment shares. The paper finds that independent-school competition decreases pupil wellbeing but raises achievement and lowers educational costs. The analysis and balancing tests indicate these findings are causal. In addition, it finds several mechanisms behind the trade-off, including more traditional teaching and stronger parental achievement pressure. The third paper analyses the impact of refugee inflows on voter turnout in Sweden in a period when shifting immigration patterns made the previously homogeneous country increasingly heterogeneous. Analysing individual-level panel data and exploiting a national refugee placement programme to obtain plausibly exogenous variation in immigration, it finds that refugee inflows significantly raise the probability of voter turnout. Balancing tests on initial turnout as well as placebo tests regressing changes in turnout on future refugee inflows support the causal interpretation of our findings. The results are consistent with group-threat theory, which predicts that increased out-group presence spurs political mobilisation among in-group members. The fourth paper investigates the impact of adult education and training (AET) on employment outcomes in Sweden. Exploiting unusually rich data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies and using an inverse-probability weighted regression-adjustment estimator to deal with selection bias, it finds that AET raises the probability of doing paid work by 4 percentage points on average. This impact is entirely driven by non-formal, job-related AET, such as workshops and on-the-job training. The paper also finds that the effect – which increases with training intensity – is very similar across different types of non-formal, job-related AET. Specification and robustness tests indicate the estimates are causal. The results suggest that policies stimulating relevant AET take-up have promise as a way to secure higher employment rates in the future

Free to improve? The impact of free school attendance in England

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England - that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two secondary free schools with different teaching philosophies: one follows a 'no excuse' paradigm, while the other one adopts a 'classical liberal', knowledge-rich approach. We establish causal effects exploiting admission lotteries and a distance-based regression discontinuity design. Both schools have a strong positive impact on student test scores on average. However, we also find heterogeneous effects: the 'no excuse' school mostly benefits boys, while the 'classical liberal' school mainly benefits White British and non-poor students. Both schools similarly reduce student absences and school mobility. Peer quality, teacher characteristics, and inspectorate ratings cannot fully explain the schools' effectiveness. Instead, a quantitative text analysis of the schools' 'vision and ethos' statements shows that the 'no excuse' and 'classical liberal' philosophies adopted by the two free schools clearly set them apart from the counterfactual schools where rejected applicants enrol, and likely explain their heterogeneous effects

Education Policy for Health Equality: Lessons for the Nordic Region

In the Nordic countries, health is linked to educational attainment to a higher extent than to income. Studies have now shown that the progressive pedagogy which generally characterizes Nordic teaching is likely to actually increase social disparities in health. The Education Policy for Health Equality – Lessons for the Nordic Region report analyses the link between health, education, knowledge and pedagogical methods. Health is often linked to educational attainment, to a greater extent than to income. Therefore, it is important to examine the extent to which education policy can contribute to, or be counterproductive to, health equality and health equity

Summary: Education Policy for Health Equality

The report Education Policy for Health Equality: Lessons for the Nordic Region (2019), analyses how education policy is likely to affect health equality in the Nordic countries. This summary includes recommendations and conclusions from  the report.Despite having the most munificent welfare states and  the lowest levels of income inequality worldwide, Nordic countries do not generally achieve higher health equality  than other nations. This conundrum has become known as  the “Nordic health equality paradox” in the public-health debate.The educational health dividend in Nordic countries may partly reflect the countries’ knowledge-intensive labour markets, which demand knowledge and skills that lower-educated individuals do not possess. This is supported by a comparatively strong relationship between literacy and numeracy scores in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the probability of being in full-time employment in the Nordic region

Group threat and voter turnout: Evidence from a refugee placement program

We study the impact of refugee inflows on voter turnout in Sweden in a period when shifting immigration patterns made the previously homogeneous country increasingly heterogeneous. Analyzing individual-level panel data and exploiting a national refugee placement program to obtain plausibly exogenous variation in immigration, we find that refugee inflows significantly raise the probability of voter turnout. Balancing tests on initial turnout as well as placebo tests regressing changes in turnout on future refugee inflows support the causal interpretation of our findings. The results are consistent with group-threat theory, which predicts that increased out-group presence spurs political mobilization among in-group members

Lönsamma kunskaper : Sambandet mellan vinst och kvalitet i svenska grundskolor

I den här rapporten undersöker forskarna Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren, London School of Economics och Institutet för Näringslivsforskning, och Henrik Jordahl, Institutet för Näringslivsforskning, sambandet mellan skolors lönsamhet och utbildningskvalitet. Analysen är gjord på aktiebolag, som är den dominerande organisationsformen för friskolor. Resultaten tyder på att lönsamhet och kvalitet går hand i hand på svenska grundskolor. Det gäller både akademiska kvalitetsmått som baseras på elevernas studieresultat och mjukare mått som baseras på elevernas attityder. För att undersöka om sambanden kan bero på betygsinflation jämförs elevernas slutbetyg med deras betyg på nationella prov. Härvid framkommer ingenting som tyder på att sambandet mellan friskolornas lönsamhet och deras elevers studieresultat skulle bero på betygsinflation. Författarna finner heller inget stöd för att lönsamma friskolor har en mer fördelaktig elevsammansättning. Tvärt emot sådana farhågor verkar elevsammansättningen nästan inte skilja sig alls mellan friskolor med olika lönsamhetsnivåer. Enligt författarna förefaller alltså hög utbildningskvalitet vara lönsam för skolföretagen, precis som kan förväntas på andra marknader