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The effects of affirmative action on the incentives to human capital accumulation are ambiguous from a theoretical perspective and the scarce empirical evidence on the matter provides mixed results. In this paper, we address this issue by investigating the impacts of Brazil's Law of Quotas on the students' performance in the college entrance exam, the ENEM. We provide causal evidence that the law fostered incentives to pre-college human capital accumulation, inducing students to attain higher ENEM scores. Moreover, the effects of the quotas were greater in quantitative-intensive subjects and these impacts increased throughout the first years after the law's implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is strong controversy over the application and effects of the Linguistic Immersion Policy in Catalonia, a policy that established that the Catalan language should constitute the only vehicular language during the different levels of compulsory schooling. While some of the effects of this policy have been determined, the evidence on other effects is scarce or non-existent. Within this group is the determination of the effect on academic performance of receiving schooling in a language other than the mother tongue. This paper analyses the performance of 15-year-old students as a function of their mother tongue. To do this, multivariant techniques are applied to the data provided by the assessments of PISA-2015. The results indicate that Spanish speakers obtain worse results than Catalan speakers all other variables been equal. The reduction in the level of competencies varies, in turn, among different subgroups of this collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of longitudinal data prevents many countries from estimating dynamic models and, thus, from obtaining valuable evidence for policymaking in the field of education. This is the case of Spain, where recent education reforms have targeted secondary schools, but their design has been based on incomplete information regarding the evolution of student performance and far from robust evidence concerning just when educational inequalities are generated. This paper addresses the absence of longitudinal data required for performing such analyses by using a dynamic model with repeated cross-sectional data. We are able to link the reading competencies of students from the same cohort that participated in two international assessments at different ages (9/10 and 15/16) and so identify when educational gaps—in terms of gender, socio-economic status and place of birth—emerge. Our results suggest that educational inequalities in Spain originate in lower educational levels. These results stress the importance of early intervention for improving performance during the compulsory education and for tackling educational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the links between labor market conditions and academic performance by disentangling the effects of unemployment. The contribution of this study is, therefore, threefold: first, it provides new evidence on the link between labor market conditions and educational decisions; second, it quantifies separately the two separate effects of unemployment on academic performance at age 15; and third, it analyses heterogeneous effects of the “family” and “local labor market” – proxied through the unemployment rate of the school community – effects.Design/methodology/approach The analysis of the impact of unemployment on academic performance is performed through hierarchical linear regressions.Findings The results show that academic performance at age 15 is affected by labor market conditions, and, at the same time, previous performance determines future educational decisions. Thus, these results highlight the sensitivity of students’ educational decisions and academic performance to shifts in the labor market.Practical implications This suggests that strategies aimed at reducing early school dropout rates should not be restricted solely to the education system. In other words, school failure is not only dependent on schools and, hence, on education policies.Originality/value This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing new evidence on the relationship between short-term labor market dynamics and academic performance. More specifically, this paper represents a significant step forward in comparison to the previous literature as it has provided responses to three key questions faced by countries with high unemployment and high early school dropout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most painful effect of the Great Recession in European countries has been the surge in unemployment rates during a period that has been characterised by an increase in income inequality and the heterogeneous pattern of this inequality by educational level. Thus, workers with low levels of educational attainment were among the first to lose their jobs. This article addresses two main research questions: first, it estimates the importance of the level of skills and education on the probability of being unemployed, disentangling the extent of the effects of human capital and signalling theories of education; and, second, it provides evidence of the impact of inequalities in the previous socioeconomic and cultural background of individuals on the probability of being unemployed. These two objectives are assessed using data for 24 jurisdictions that participated in the first round of the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Skill levels play a central role in explaining unemployment in Europe and act as an indirect channel via which a family's sociocultural background has an impact on its labour market status. Combining the results of alternative models, we identify those European labour markets that are most sensitive to human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013 Spain introduced a series of educational reforms explicitly inspired by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results. These reforms were mainly implemented in secondary education – based upon the assumption that this is where Spain's educational problems lie. This paper questions this assumption by attempting to identify the point where Spanish children fall behind young people in other developed countries. Specifically, by drawing data from multiple international assessments, we are able to explore how cross-national differences in reading skills change as children age. Consideration is given to both the average level of achievement and the evolution of educational inequalities. Our conclusion is that policy-makers have focused their efforts on the wrong part of the education system; educational achievement is low in Spain (and educational inequalities large) long before children enter secondary school. This study therefore serves as a note of caution against simplistic interpretation of the PISA rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in Mathematics and Science Study are two highly respected studies of school pupils' academic achievement. English policy-makers have been disappointed with school children's performance on these tests, particularly in comparison to the strong results of young people from East Asia. In this paper, we provide new insight into the England-East Asia gap in school children's mathematics skills. We do so by considering how cross-national differences in math test scores change between ages 10 and 16. Our results suggest that, although average math test scores are higher in East Asian countries, this achievement gap does not increase between ages 10 and 16. We thus conclude that reforming the secondary school system may not be the most effective way for England to 'catch up' with the East Asian nations in the PISA math rankings. Rather, earlier intervention, during pre-school and primary school, may be needed instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We investigate the effects of being exposed to a strong earthquake during school age on educational attainments. • The identification strategies exploits variation in exposure by district of residence and birth cohort. • The results indicates that earthquakes exposure has negative effects on years of schooling and on the probability of completing compulsory education. • The evidence from falsification exercises and robustness checks validates the causal interpretation of our findings. • Regarding the mechanisms at work, we find that the disruption of school buildings represents a channels through which the natural disasters harms human capital formation. Natural disasters are a significant threat to human development. In this paper, we analyze the effects of being exposed to a strong earthquake during school age on schooling outcomes. We merge geolocated data about the intensity of the shock at the district level with individual information from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. The identification strategy exploits variation in exposure to the natural shock by birth cohort and district of residence, considering as the treated group individuals who were residing in affected districts while they were in school age. Earthquake exposure reduces years of schooling by somewhat less than one year and negatively affects the probability of completing compulsory education but does not alter the chances of enrolling into post-compulsory education. Falsification analysis and several robustness checks corroborate the causal interpretation of our findings. The analysis of the potential mechanisms indicates that induced migration and casualties occurring at the family level as a consequence of the earthquake do not seem to play a relevant role. However, damages in educational infrastructures do represent a relevant channel through which natural disasters harm human capital formation. Part of the overall impact of the earthquake represents a delay in schooling progression, but a substantial share of its effect consists in a permanent loss of human capital among affected individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]