Kristian Bernt Karlson

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

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