Educational stratification among Arabs and Jews in Israel: historical disadvantage, discrimination, and opportunity

Arabs in Israel are a heterogeneous but largely underprivileged minority with a history of disadvantage in several domains, including education and employment. In this paper, we document changes in their attainment of various educational levels across cohorts born from the mid-1920s to the 1970s. We make comparisons among different Arab religious groups, between men and women, and between Arabs and the majority Jewish populations in Israel. We find that over consecutive birth cohorts, substantial ethnic differences in educational attainment have narrowed at the lower levels of schooling, but have increased at higher levels. Moreover, the results indicate that the disadvantage of Muslim Arabs in terms of entry into and completion of high school can be accounted for only partially by differences in the social status of their parents and characteristics of their neighbourhoods. The findings suggest that long-term historical differences among groups and discriminatory practices towards Arabs are important factors in explanations of disparities in educational attainment.     

The Changing Context of Fatherhood in Canada: A life Course Analysis

Arabs in Israel are a heterogeneous but largely underprivileged minority with a history of disadvantage in several domains, including education and employment. In this paper, we document changes in their attainment of various educational levels across cohorts born from the mid-1920s to the 1970s. We make comparisons among different Arab religious groups, between men and women, and between Arabs and the majority Jewish populations in Israel. We find that over consecutive birth cohorts, substantial ethnic differences in educational attainment have narrowed at the lower levels of schooling, but have increased at higher levels. Moreover, the results indicate that the disadvantage of Muslim Arabs in terms of entry into and completion of high school can be accounted for only partially by differences in the social status of their parents and characteristics of their neighbourhoods. The findings suggest that long-term historical differences among groups and discriminatory practices towards Arabs are important factors in explanations of disparities in educational attainment.     

The Demographic Promise of Expanded Female Education: Trends in the Age at First Birth in Malawi

The expansion of female education has been promoted as a way to postpone the age at first birth. In sub‐Saharan Africa, the first cohorts to benefit from policies that expanded access to education are now reaching adulthood and beginning childbearing. I investigate whether the expansion of education in Malawi, which implemented a free primary education policy in 1994 and subsequently expanded secondary schooling, has led to a later age at first birth and whether the education gradient in fertility timing has remained stable over time. Despite increases in female grade attainment over the past twenty years, the age at first birth has not changed. Using instrumental variables analysis, I find a significant negative association between grade attainment and age at first birth, suggesting that the deterioration of school quality and the shift in the age pattern of enrollment that accompanied educational expansion may have compromised the transformative potential of education.     

Methods for measuring school performance through cohort analysis

In order to evaluate the main educational characteristics of a grade cohort—which are the proportion of those who get a degree, the average time spent in school and finally the mean educational attainment of the cohort—we present a school system in which repeat enrolments are well identified. In this discrete model, we present, for each grade, three transition coefficients: the proportion of those passing to the next grade, the proportion of those repeating the grade and the proportion of those leaving the school system. Afterwards, we set up a system of equations leading to the distribution of the entrants in the cohort according to the levels of their educational attainment, a system of equations for which a simple solution will depend on two assumptions.     

Childhood nutrition and later fertility: Pathways through education and pre-pregnant nutritional status

Better childhood nutrition is associated with earlier physical maturation during adolescence and increased schooling attainment. However, as earlier onset of puberty and increased schooling can have opposing effects on fertility, the net effect of improvements in childhood nutrition on a woman’s fertility are uncertain. Using path analysis, we estimate the strength of the pathways between childhood growth and subsequent fertility outcomes in Guatemalan women studied prospectively since birth. Height for age z score at 24 months was positively related to body mass index (BMI kg/m²) and height (cm) in adolescence and to schooling attainment. BMI was negatively associated (−0.23 ± 0.09 years per kg/m²; p < . 05) and schooling was positively associated (0.38 ± 0.06 years per grade; p < .001) with age at first birth. Total associations with the number of children born were positive from BMI (0.07 ± 0.02 per kg/m²; p < .05) and negative from schooling (−0.18 ± 0.02 per grade; p < .01). Height was not related to age at first birth or the number of children born. Taken together, childhood nutrition, as reflected by height at 2 years, was positively associated with delayed age at first birth and fewer children born. If schooling is available for girls, increased growth during childhood will most likely result in a net decrease infertility.     

Human Capabilities Versus Human Capital: Guaging the Value of Education in Developing Countries

The purpose of this study is to defend the view that education should be evaluated in terms of the capability to achieve valued functionings, rather than mental satisfaction or resources. In keeping with Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach we argue that mental satisfaction provides an inaccurate metric of well-being because of the phenomenon of adaptive preferences. Equally, resources cannot be used as a metric of well-being because of inequalities in the ability to convert income and commodities into valued functionings. Hence, interpreting education as a means to create human capital is also impoverished because it evaluates education solely in terms of the accumulation of resources. In order to provide evidence in support of the human capabilities approach we statistically examine the channels through which educational attainment affects the health functionings implied by life expectancy. Using panel data analysis for 35 developing countries for the years 1990, 1995 and 2000 we compare the health functionings (as indicated by life expectancy) that are achieved by the income growth generated by educational attainment, with the total health functionings that are achieved by educational attainment. We find that educational attainment (as indicated by average years of schooling) has a significant effect on life expectancy independently of its effect by way of income growth. A 1% increase in per capita income increases life expectancy by 0.073954% while a 1% increase in average years of schooling directly increases life expectancy by 0.055324%. Because it shows that income underestimates the health functionings achieved by educational attainment, our empirical findings lend support to the claim that the value of education should be measured in terms of the capability for functioning, rather than resources.     

The impact of school entry laws on female education and teenage fertility

The literature on school entry laws in the USA suggests that school entry laws affect educational success in offsetting ways, where students born after the entry cutoff date tend to achieve higher test scores yet complete fewer years of schooling. However, the laws have little impact on a number of other outcomes, including fertility, wages, and employment. This paper has two goals. First, using a North Carolina dataset which individually links birth certificate data to school administrative records, it more fully explores the opposite impacts on educational success than previous papers and investigates why students born after the cutoff date have lower educational attainment despite doing better in school. Second, it investigates the impact of school entry laws on teenage fertility and provides some evidence that test scores and years of education have negative impacts, but that these impacts offset each other in the case of school entry laws.     

Can migration reduce educational attainment? Evidence from Mexico

This paper examines the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates to instrument for current migration, we find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment. IV-censored ordered probits show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. We find that the observed decrease in schooling of 16- to 18-year-olds is accounted for by current migration of boys and increased housework for girls.     

家庭教育背景对个人教育回报和收入的影响

家庭背景是个人收入的重要影响因素,忽略家庭教育背景会导致个人教育回报的高估。随着个人受教育水平的提高,家庭教育背景对个人教育回报的影响逐渐增大;与父亲的教育背景相比,母亲的教育背景对个人教育回报的影响相对较大。随着父母受教育水平的提高,其对个人收入的正面影响逐渐增大;与父亲的教育背景相比,母亲的教育背景对个人收入的影响相对较大。因而,教育投资不仅可以提高劳动者自身的收入水平,而且可以对其子女的收入水平起到积极的促进作用。     

Does schooling protect sexual health? The association between three measures of education and STIs among adolescents in Malawi

While multiple studies have documented shifting educational gradients in HIV prevalence, less attention has been given to the effect of school participation and academic skills on infection during adolescence. Using the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study, a longitudinal survey that followed 2,649 young people aged 14–17 at baseline from 2007 to 2013, we estimate the effect of three education variables: school enrolment, grade attainment, and academic skills—numeracy and Chichewa literacy—on herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) and HIV incidence using interval-censored survival analysis. We find that grade attainment is significantly associated with lower rates of both HSV-2 and HIV among girls, and is negatively associated with HSV-2 but not HIV among boys. School enrolment and academic skills are not significantly associated with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for boys or girls in our final models. Efforts to encourage school progression in high-prevalence settings in sub-Saharan Africa could well reduce, or at least postpone, acquisition of STIs.     

Religion,socialization, and fertility

Longitudinal data from a large .sample of Wisconsin men and women are used to examine the effects on fertility of religious and secular socialization, including farm upbringing. Analyses of children ever born (CEB) and of parity progression show that current religious choice is more important in explaining fertility than is religion of orientation or denomination of secondary school. The effects of current and background religion are additive, and the effect of current religion is the same for men as for women at each parity progression. Catholic religious background affects fertility primarily by increasing the likelihood of having a third or fourth child; its indirect effects on fertility operate through religious schooling and current religious affiliation. Unlike religious background, the positive influence of farm background on fertility persists among men and women, even when current farm employment is controlled.     

Back to School: Racial and Gender Differences in Adults’ Participation in Formal Schooling, 1978–2013

Trends and gaps in educational attainment by race and gender have received much attention in recent years, but reports of these trends have generally focused on traditional-age college students. Little is known about whether and how enrollment in formal schooling among older adults (between 29 and 61 years old) has changed over time. In this article, I draw on Current Population Survey data from 1978 to 2013 to provide the most comprehensive analysis of trends in adults’ formal school enrollment by demographic group to date. Results indicate that adult black women in particular have seen relatively high growth rates in their enrollment. Black women were 85 % more likely to enroll in 2011 and 46 % more likely in 2013 than they were in 1978. Their growing advantage relative to other racial-gender groups owes largely to their increasing educational attainment rates overall, given the relationship between prior schooling and enrollment later in life. Taken together, this article’s findings suggest that adult enrollment is at once equalizing and disequalizing. On the one hand, it has the potential to narrow the gaps between those with some college experience and those with a four-year degree. On the other hand, patterns of adults’ participation in formal education are widening educational gaps between those with and without traditional-age college experience.     

Schooling,marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5?years and marrying 1?year later delays age at first birth by 0.5?years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75?years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women.     

The limited effect of increasing educational attainment on childlessness trends in twentieth-century Europe,women born 1916–65

During the twentieth century, trends in childlessness varied strongly across European countries while educational attainment grew continuously across them. Using census and large-scale survey data from 13 European countries, we investigated the relationship between these two factors among women born between 1916 and 1965. Up to the 1940 birth cohort, the share of women childless at age 40+ decreased universally. Afterwards, the trends diverged across countries. The results suggest that the overall trends were related mainly to changing rates of childlessness within educational groups and only marginally to changes in the educational composition of the population. Over time, childlessness levels of the medium-educated and high-educated became closer to those of the low-educated, but the difference in level between the two better educated groups remained stable in Western and Southern Europe and increased slightly in the East.     

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.     

Parental Divorce and Children’s Schooling in Rural Malawi

A growing body of literature has examined the impact of different types of family structures on children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. These studies have investigated how living arrangements, gender of the household head, parental death, and paternal migration are related to schooling. Although many sub-Saharan African countries have high divorce rates, very few studies have explored the impact of parental divorce on children’s schooling. The present study uses three waves of data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) to investigate the effect of parental divorce on children’s schooling and the possible mechanisms driving this relationship. Unlike prior studies, this study uses child-level fixed-effects models to control for selection into divorce. Results show that parental divorce is associated with lower grade attainment and a larger schooling gap, defined as the number of years a child is behind in school (among children currently attending school). Although no association exists between parental divorce and current school attendance, girls affected by divorce are significantly less likely to be attending school. Differences in economic resources, maternal coresidence, or maternal psychological well-being do not explain the relationship between parental divorce and children’s schooling.     

Marriage (Still) Matters: The Contribution of Demographic Change to Trends in Childlessness in the United States

Childlessness in the United States nearly doubled between 1980 and 2000. Other dramatic changes in the U.S. population also took place over this period—notably, women’s average educational attainment increased, and the proportion marrying declined—but the impact of these changes on childlessness has not been formally examined. In this article, I use data from the Current Population Survey Fertility Supplements (1995, 1998, 2004, 2008) and logistic regression and regression-based decomposition techniques to assess the contribution of changes in educational attainment, marriage behavior, and racial/ethnic composition on population levels of childlessness in the United States. Results show that increases in the proportion of women unmarried by age 40 contributed most to the increase in childlessness in the late twentieth century, although these increases were offset somewhat by increased childbearing among unmarried women. The rising proportion of women with a college degree also explained a substantial amount of the increase in childless women.     

The spread of primary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications for fertility change

In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of “mass formal schooling.” This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub‐Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15–19‐year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass‐schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels.     

High Fertility and Children's Schooling in Ghana: Sex Differences in Parental Contributions and Educational Outcomes

This paper explores the linkages at the family level between sustained high fertility and children's schooling in Ghana, in the context of a constrained economic environment and rising school fees. The unique feature of the paper is its exploration of the operational significance of alternative definitions of “sib size” – the number of “same-mother” siblings and “same-father” siblings – in relation to enrolment, grade attainment, and school drop-out for boys and girls of primary and secondary school age. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Ghana Living Standards Measurement Survey (GLSS) data, collected in 1987–88. The results of the statistical analysis lead to the conclusion that the co-existence of high fertility, rising school costs, and economic reversals is having a negative impact on the education of girls, in terms of drop-out rates and grade attainment. Some of the costs of high fertility are borne by older siblings (particularly girls) rather than by parents, with the result that children from larger families experience greater inequality between themselves and their siblings by sex and birth order. Because fathers have more children on average than mothers, the inequality between their children appears to be even greater than between mothers' children, particularly given the importance of fathers' role in the payment of school fees. The paper concludes that the greatest cost for children in Ghana of sustained high fertility is likely to be the reinforcement of traditional sex roles, largely a product of high fertility in the past.     

Prenatal Health,Educational Attainment,and Intergenerational Inequality: The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study

In this article, we study the effects of prenatal health on educational attainment and on the reproduction of family background inequalities in education. Using Finnish birth cohort data, we analyze several maternal and fetal health variables, many of which have not been featured in the literature on long-term socioeconomic effects of health despite the effects of these variables on birth and short-term health outcomes. We find strong negative effects of mother’s prenatal smoking on educational attainment, which are stronger if the mother smoked heavily but are not significant if she quit during the first trimester. Anemia during pregnancy is also associated with lower levels of attained education. Other indicators of prenatal health (pre-pregnancy obesity, mother’s antenatal depressed mood, hypertension and preeclampsia, early prenatal care visits, premature birth, and small size for gestational age) do not predict educational attainment. Our measures explain little of the educational inequalities by parents’ class or education. However, smoking explains 12%—and all health variables together, 19%—of the lower educational attainment of children born to unmarried mothers. Our findings point to the usefulness of proximate health measures in addition to general ones. They also point to the potentially important role played by early health in intergenerational processes.