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Does Schooling Affect Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany

By on November 20, 2023 in Articles

Michael Grätz

Sociological Science November 20, 2023
10.15195/v10.a31

Abstract

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Critical theories of education and the dynamics of skill formation model predict that the education system reproduces socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment. Previous empirical studies comparing changes in socioeconomic inequalities in academic performance over the summer to changes in these inequalities during the school year have argued, however, that schooling reduces inequalities in educational performance. The present study highlights the question of whether schooling affects socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment by analyzing a natural experiment that induces exogenous variation in the length of schooling and allowed me to investigate the causal, long-term effects of the length of schooling on inequalities in educational attainment. Some German states moved the school start from spring to summer in 1966/1967 and introduced two short school years, each of which was three months shorter than a regular school year. I use variation in the short school years across cohorts and states to estimate the causal effects of the length of schooling on socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment based on two German panel surveys. Less schooling due to the short school years did not affect inequalities in educational attainment. This finding runs counter to the results from the summer learning literature and to the predictions of the dynamics of skill formation model and critical theories of education. I conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for our understanding of socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael Grätz: Swiss Centre for Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES, University of Lausanne, Swedish Institute for Social Research SOFI, Stockholm University
E-mail: michael.gratz@unil.ch

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under grant agreements PZ00P1_180128 and TMSGI1_211627 and by the Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd (Forte) under grant agreement 2016-0709. Earlier versions of this study were presented at the University of Berne, the University of Antwerp, the Annual Conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research, and the conference of the Akademie für Soziologie in 2021 as well as the Research Committee 28 of the International Sociological Association conference in London in 2022. I thank these participants as well as my colleagues at the University of Lausanne and Stockholm University for their comments and suggestions. I am particularly grateful for detailed suggestions from Andreas Diemer, Jörg Dollmann, Chaïm LaRoi, and Richard Nennstiel. This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Adults doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC6:11.1.0). From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data were collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS has been carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network. The SOEP data were collected by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Grätz, Michael. 2023. “Does Schooling Affect Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany.” Sociological Science 10: 880–902.
  • Received: May 20, 2023
  • Accepted: September 10, 2023
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a31


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Mexican Ancestry, Immigrant Generation, and Educational Attainment in the United States

By on September 29, 2014 in Articles

Stephen L. Morgan, Dafna Gelbgiser

Sociological Science, September 29, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a23

Abstract
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After introducing alternative perspectives on assimilation and acculturation, we use the 2002-2012 waves of the Education Longitudinal Study to model differences in educational attainment for students sampled as high school sophomores in 2002.  We focus on patterns observed for the growing Mexican immigrant population, analyzing separately the trajectories of 1st, 1.5th, 2nd, and 3rd+ generation Mexican immigrant students, in comparison to 3rd+ generation students who self-identify as non-Hispanic whites and students who self-identify as non-Hispanic blacks or African Americans.  The results suggest that the dissonant acculturation mechanism associated with the segmented assimilation perspective is mostly unhelpful for explaining patterns of educational attainment, especially for the crucial groups of 1.5th and 2nd generation Mexican immigrant students.  Instead, standard measures of family background can account for large portions of group differences in bachelor’s degree attainment, with or without additional adjustments for behavioral commitment to schooling, occupational plans, and educational expectations.  The broad structure of inequality in the United States, as well as the rising costs of bachelor’s degrees, should be the primary source of concern when considering the prospects for the incorporation of the children of recent Mexican immigrants into the mainstream.

Stephen L. Morgan: Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University.  E-mail: stephen.morgan@jhu.edu

Dafna Gelbgiser: Cornell University. Email: dg432@cornell.edu


Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Morgan, Stephen L. and Dafna Gelbgiser 2014. “Mexican Ancestry, Immigrant Generation, and Educational Attainment in the United States.”Sociological Science 1: 397-422
  • Received: June 19, 2014
  • Accepted: July 14, 2014
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v1.a23

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