How should we organize schooling to further children with migration background?

Educational integration of children with migration background is an important issue in the social sciences. Few studies exist that quantify the disadvantage of immigrant children in education and there has not been any attempt to identify institutional conditions of the education system that contribute to educational integration. Using data from five international student assessments, this study tries to fill that gap. First, Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions are used to allow for a comparison of (dis)integration of students with migration background across countries and time. In a second step, (dis)integration is related to institutional characteristics of the schooling system. The study shows that early education, time in school and central exams furthers integration, while social segregation of students among schools is detrimental to educational integration.Institution; Integration; Immigrant; Pisa; Timss; Education

Early tracking and the misfortune of being young

In the Austrian (as well as the German) education system students have to choose between different school tracks at the age of 10. We argue that early tracking creates inefficiencies because the earlier the track choice has to be made, the more it is influenced by factors other than innate ability. Recent evidence suggests that the relative age of a student within a grade is related to his or her achievement, and that this effect is decreasing over grades. Thus, age-related achievement differences probably translate into age-related differences in track choice if track choice has to be made early. In this paper we estimate the effect of observed age on the track choice after grade 4 using register data for a major Austrian city for the period 1984-2006. Since observed age at track choice is endogenous, we exploit the exogenous variation in birth month to identify the causal effect of age. We find a strong and significant positive effect of age on track choice in grades 5-8. Since after grade 8, students again have to make a track choice, we use additional data from PISA 2003 and 2006 to show that the effect is long-lasting in urban areas. Therefore, the education system fails to provide a mechanism that leads to an efficient allocation of students to tracks.Early tracking, school choice, age effect, instrumental variables, birth month

Girls, girls, girls: gender composition and female school choice

Gender segregation in the labor market may be explained by women's re- luctance to choose technical occupations, although the foundations for career choices are certainly laid earlier, during education. Educational experts claim that female students are doing better in math and science and are more likely to choose those subjects if they are in single-sex classes. Possible explanations are the lack of self-confidence of girls in male-dominated subjects, the domi- nating behavior of boys in the classroom and unequal treatment by teachers. In this paper, we identify the causal impact of gender composition in coedu- cational classes on the choice of school type for female students. We propose that girls are less likely to choose a female-dominated school type at the age of 14 after spending the previous years in classes with a higher share of female students. We address the problem of endogenous school choice by using nat- ural variation in gender composition of adjacent cohorts within schools. The results are clear-cut and survive powerful falsification and sensitivity checks: Females are less likely to choose a female-dominated school type and more likely to choose the technical school type if they were exposed to a higher share of girls in previous grades. Our paper contributes to the recent debate about coeducation either in certain subjects or at the school level.gender segregation, coeducation, career choice

Peer effects in Austrian schools

This study deals with educational production in Austria and is focused on the potential impact of schoolmates on students’ academic outcomes. We used PISA 2000 data to estimate peer effects for 15 and 16 year old students. The estimations yield substantial positive effects of the peer groups’ socioeconomic composition on student achievement. Furthermore, quantile regressions suggest peer effects to be asymmetric in favor of low-ability students, meaning that students with lower skills benefit more from being exposed to clever peers, whereas those with higher skills do not seem to be affected much. Social heterogeneity, moreover, has no big adverse effect on academic outcomes. These results imply considerable social gains of reducing stratification in educational settings.

Employer provided training in Austria: Productivity, wages and wage inequality

We use data on Austrian firms and employees to estimate the effects of employer-provided training on productivity, wages, and the inequality of wages within firms. While the average amount spent on employer-provided training is low in general, we find a robust positive elasticity of training on productivity of about 0.04. In-house training is more effective than external courses, and language, administrative and personal skills courses are more effective than sales training and IT-courses. We find a significant relationship between training and wages, the coefficient is about 0.05. We find no significant effect of training on the inequality of wages within firms.employer-provided training, productivity, wages

More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe

We study the relationship between education and fertility, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in Europe as source of exogenous variation in education. Using data from 8 European countries, we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological kids and the incidence of childlessness. We find that more education causes a substantial decrease in childlessness and an increase in the average number of children per woman. Our findings are robust to a number of falsification checks and we can provide complementary empirical evidence on the mechanisms leading to these surprising results.instrumental variables, education, fertility

More Schooling, More Children

We study the relationship between education and fertility, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in Europe as source of exogenous variation in education. Using data from 8 European countries, we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological kids and the incidence of childlessness. We find that more education causes a substantial decrease in childlessness and an increase in the average number of children per woman. Our findings are robust to a number of falsification checks and we can provide complementary empirical evidence on the mechanisms leading to these surprising results.Instrumental variables, education, fertility