1. Measuring educational inequality of opportunity: pupil’s effort matters
- Author
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Gaston Yalonetzky, Sandy Tubeuf, M. Niaz Asadullah, Alain Trannoy, University of Malaya = Universiti Malaya [Kuala Lumpur, Malaisie] (UM), Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques (AMSE), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-École Centrale de Marseille (ECM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut de recherche santé et société [Louvain, Belgium] (IRSS), Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Institut de recherches économiques et sociales (UCL IRES), University of Leeds, The QSSMEB survey was funded by the World Bank. We thank support from the LABEX AMSE. Alain Trannoy thanks the support of the research project IMCHILD funded by the European Union and the French National Research Agency Grants ANR-17-EURE-0020. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 36th meeting of the ECINEQ with the support of Health Chair-a joint initiative by PSL, Universite Paris-Dauphine, ENSAE, MGEN and ISTYA under the aegis of the Fondation du Risque (FDR)., ANR-17-EURE-0020,AMSE (EUR),Aix-Marseille School of Economics(2017), University of Malaya [Kuala Lumpur, Malaisie], Leeds University Business School (The University of Leeds), UCL - SSS/IRSS - Institut de recherche santé et société, and UCL - SSH/LIDAM/IRES - Institut de recherches économiques et sociales
- Subjects
JEL: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods/C.C0 - General/C.C0.C01 - Econometrics ,Economics and Econometrics ,Sociology and Political Science ,Inequality ,school ,050204 development studies ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Geography, Planning and Development ,effort ,Development ,JEL: I - Health, Education, and Welfare/I.I2 - Education and Research Institutions/I.I2.I24 - Education and Inequality ,0502 economics and business ,Production (economics) ,050207 economics ,media_common ,Estimation ,education ,Actuarial science ,[QFIN]Quantitative Finance [q-fin] ,4. Education ,05 social sciences ,Variance (accounting) ,[SHS.ECO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Economics and Finance ,Educational inequality ,inequality of opportunity ,JEL: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth/O.O1 - Economic Development/O.O1.O12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development ,Social determinism ,Variance decomposition of forecast errors ,Normative ,variance decomposition - Abstract
International audience; The distinction between effort and other factors, such as family background, matters for correcting policies and normative reasons when we appeal to inequality of opportunity. We take advantage of a purposefully designed survey on secondary schools in rural Bangladesh to offer a comprehensive view of the importance of overall effort when measuring inequalities of opportunity in education. The analysis comprises decomposition exercises of the predicted variance of student performance in mathematics and English by source (effort, circumstances, etc.) and subgroup (within- and between-schools) based on parametric estimates of educational production functions. Pupils’ effort, preferences, and talents contribute between 31% and 40% of the total predicted variances in performance scores. The contribution of overall effort falls by 10% when the correlation between effort and circumstances is taken into account. These findings are robust to the choice of estimation strategy (i.e. combined within- and between-schools variation models versus multilevel random-effect models). All in all, these results advocate that social determinism in education can be mitigated by individual effort at school.
- Published
- 2021