New research from Denmark suggests that in some respects students’ wellbeing improved during the Spring 2020 lockdown, and that this effect was strongest among students of lower socioeconomic status. The study used data from the Danish Student Wellbeing Study, which is carried out nationwide on an annual basis. It compared responses from students aged 12-15 … Read more
The effect of COVID-19-related school closures on students’ well-being: Evidence from Danish nationwide panel data
Educational differentiation in secondary education and labour-market outcomes
Countries differ in the way in which they organise their education systems. With this special issue, we want to pay particular attention to the period of secondary education, the different institutional approaches that countries pursue during that phase and the long-term consequences for individual labour-market outcomes that follow from it. Secondary education is probably the … 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
Social origins, tracking and occupational attainment in Italy
This study looks at the long-term effects of pupils’ choices between academic and vocational tracks at age 14. It finds that while there is no difference in employability between the two groups, those on the academic track gain advantages even if they do not go on to gain a degree. The analysis is based on … Read more
Social origins, track choices and labour-market outcomes: evidence from the French case
This paper examines the consequences of following an academic versus vocational path in upper secondary school in France in terms of job attainment and earnings at the entrance into the labour market. Using rich nationally representative longitudinal data running from the beginning of secondary education until entrance into the labour market, the researchers identify the … Read more
The Effect of Education on Health and Mortality: A Review of Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence
Education is strongly associated with better health and longer lives. However, the extent to which education causes health and longevity is widely debated. We develop a human capital framework to structure the interpretation of the empirical evidence and review evidence on the causal effects of education on mortality and its two most common preventable causes: … Read more
The heterogeneous effects of parental unemployment on siblings’ educational outcomes
This study looks at the long-term effects of parental unemployment on children’s education. It finds that while there are negative impacts if the unemployment is during adolescence, there are, on average, none if it happens in early childhood. The researchers used data based on a 10 per cent sample of the adult population of Finland, … Read more
Measuring educational inequality of opportunity: pupil’s effort matters
This research uses a specially-designed survey in secondary schools in rural Bangladesh to look at the role of student effort in educational achievements and as a factor in overcoming disadvantage and inequality. The researchers looked at the test results of Bangladeshi schoolchildren in mathematics and English and evaluated the importance of effort relative to their … Read more
Investigating the genetic architecture of noncognitive skills using GWAS-by-subtraction
Little is known about the genetic architecture of traits affecting educational attainment other than cognitive ability. We used genomic structural equation modeling and prior genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of educational attainment (n = 1,131,881) and cognitive test performance (n = 257,841) to estimate SNP associations with educational attainment variation that is independent of cognitive ability. … Read more
Inequalities in Children’s Experiences of Home Learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown in England
This paper combines novel data on the time use, home-learning practices and economic circumstances of families with children during the COVID-19 lockdown with pre-lockdown data from the UK Time Use Survey to characterise the time use of children and how it changed during lockdown, and to gauge the extent to which changes in time use … Read more