This study looks at the possible benefits and disadvantages of choosing a vocational rather than an academic track in upper secondary education. While supporters of vocational education and training (VET) say it can provide a safety net for those at risk of dropping out of education or failing to enter the labour market, critics say … Read more
Long-term labor market returns to upper secondary school track choice: Leveraging idiosyncratic variation in peers’ choices
Educational tracking and personality formation: Evidence from a dual system
Research on the effects of educational selection has tended to focus on how it affects academic development and achievement. This project asks a different question: does the educational track on which we are placed as teenagers affect the development of personality traits? Personality traits continue to develop throughout the adolescent and early adult years, and … Read more
Lives on track? Long‐term earnings returns to selective school placement in England and Denmark
This paper looks how selective schooling affected the lifetime earnings of people born in the 1950s, and finds it did little to improve earnings or to increase social mobility in England. The researchers used data from the National Child Development Study on 15,000 people born in England and Wales in a single week in March … Read more
Upper secondary school tracking, labour market outcomes and intergenerational inequality in Denmark
This paper is a comprehensive analysis of how secondary school education of Danish children affects their early job and earning prospects. Using administrative data on more than 50,000 children born in Denmark in 1986, the researchers looked at whether young people were placed on an academic or vocational track at school and the sort of … Read more
Educational tracking and long-term outcomes by social origin: Seven countries in comparison
This paper uses longitudinal data from seven countries to assess how systems of educational tracking can impact on social mobility. Studies which simply compare comprehensive and tracked systems may be flawed, the research suggests, because of differences in how countries separate students for instructional purposes. The researchers used large-scale longitudinal data from Denmark, England, Finland, … Read more
Sources of change in the primary and secondary effects of social class origin on educational decisions: evidence from Denmark, 2002–2016
It is well-known that pupils from poorer backgrounds are more likely than their peers to take vocational rather than academic routes in upper secondary school – but what drives this? Does social class status itself lead to these decisions, or is there a mediating factor at play: that pupils from less well-off homes tend to … Read more
Family Background, Educational Qualifications and Meritocratic Labor Market Allocation: Evidence from Danish Siblings
This paper looks at how education and family background shapes the occupation and earnings of a generation of Danes, and concludes that education plays a powerful role in explaining why children from advantaged backgrounds have higher earnings than chil-dren from disadvantaged backgrounds. The researchers studied all children born in Denmark between 1965 and 1971 and … Read more
Aiming High and Missing the Mark? Educational Choice, Dropout Risk, and Achievement in Upper Secondary Education among Children of Immigrants in Denmark
This paper finds that high aspiration among young people from ethnic minority backgrounds can be a double-edged sword: it helps close the gap between these young people and their native-origin peers, but at the cost of higher drop-out rates. The research looks at the choices made by Danish youngsters at the age of 16, when … Read more
The Structure, Causes, and Consequences of Tracking in the Danish Education System
This report provides an overview over the institutional configuration of the Danish educational system and its development over time with a focus on inequalities in educational attainment. We draw on population data from Danish administrative registers and we describe the development of educational attainment including track choices and field of study specializations for individuals born … Read more