Selections and social selectivity on the academic track: A life-course analysis of educational attainment in Germany

Graduating from university is just the final step of an extended educational career. Sociological transition research has revealed that final educational attainment must be understood as the result of a sequence of successive decisions. With regard to graduation from university, one has to take into account that upper secondary school qualifications are required for enrolling in the first place, and in Germany, the decision for this kind of schooling is at a much earlier age. So where on the long way to the university degree does Germany ‘lose’ its potential academics and in particular its lower class children?     

Understanding links between adolescent health and educational attainment

The educational and economic consequences of poor health during childhood and adolescence have become increasingly clear, with a resurgence of evidence leading researchers to reconsider the potentially significant contribution of early-life health to population welfare both within and across generations. Meaningful relationships between early-life health and educational attainment raise important questions about how health may influence educational success in young adulthood and beyond, as well as for whom its influence is strongest. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I examine how adolescents’ health and social status act together to create educational disparities in young adulthood, focusing on two questions in particular. First, does the link between adolescent health and educational attainment vary across socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups? Second, what academic factors explain the connection between adolescent health and educational attainment? The findings suggest that poorer health in adolescence is strongly negatively related to educational attainment, net of both observed confounders and unobserved, time-invariant characteristics within households. The reduction in attainment is particularly large for non-Hispanic white adolescents, suggesting that the negative educational consequences of poor health are not limited to only the most socially disadvantaged adolescents. Finally, I find that the link between adolescent health and educational attainment is explained by academic factors related to educational participation and, most importantly, academic performance, rather than by reduced educational expectations. These findings add complexity to our understanding of how the educational consequences of poor health apply across the social hierarchy, as well as why poor health may lead adolescents to complete less schooling.In a presidential address to the Population Association of America, Palloni (2006) emphasized the need for research on early-life health as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status. Although poor health is well known as a consequence of childhood and family socioeconomic conditions, it is also clear that illness during childhood and adolescence has lasting educational and socioeconomic effects (Case, Fertig, and Paxson 2005; Conley and Bennett 2000; Smith 2005). What remains less clear is how health early in life influences educational success in young adulthood and beyond. Do those with a health disadvantage graduate from high school at lower rates, for example, because they perform poorly in school or because they and their families develop reduced expectations for the future? In addition, how do race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status complicate these relationships? Our understanding of how health’s influence on educational attainment differs across groups is unclear.This article considers these complexities by asking several questions. It confirms that health during adolescence is strongly negatively associated with educational attainment and then examines this relationship in greater depth than is typical. First, I examine variation in the link between health and educational attainment along socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines. Are the families of adolescents in poorer health better able to mitigate the negative educational consequences of a condition if they are socially and/or economically advantaged? Or do youths in these families suffer an equal or greater disadvantage? Second, I evaluate the role of academic factors—specifically, educational participation, performance, and expectations—that may explain the connection between adolescents’ health and educational attainment. I examine these questions with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), with an overall goal of understanding the ways in which health and social status act together to create educational disparities in the early life course.     

Welfare states and social mobility: How educational and social policy may affect cross-national differences in the association between occupational origins and destinations

Cross-national differences in the association between origins and destinations correspond to differences in both welfare regime type and access to post-secondary education. Socialist and social democratic welfare regimes foster a weaker origin–destination association than liberal, corporatist, or mixed regimes do. Nations with better-educated labor forces tend to also be the nations where the association between origins and destinations is weakest. Furthermore, the social and educational policy interact so that the tendency for educational access to lower the origin–destination association is most pronounced in the liberal welfare setting where the association would otherwise be greatest. Greater access is not necessarily associated with greater equality of opportunity, and we find very weak evidence that equality of educational opportunity itself is a direct influence on equality of occupational opportunity (even though nations that have a strong origin–education association also have a strong origin–destination association).     

Cohort effects in the educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Germany: An analysis of census data

Even though second generation immigrants make up ever increasing population shares in industrialized countries we know little about their social integration and wellbeing. This study focuses on the educational attainment of German born children of immigrants. Their schooling success still lags behind that of natives. This paper investigates school attendance and completed degrees of second generation immigrants and finds that even after controlling for characteristics the educational gap remains large and significant. The available evidence suggests that this group as a whole does not assimilate to native educational standards and instead increasingly falls behind.This research was completed while the author was guest at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. I am grateful for IZAs hospitality and particularly for the help of Thomas K. Bauer. I thank the anonymous referees and the editors for very helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Age at marriage and educational attainment in the United States

Substantial declines in age at marriage for both sexes have been observed over the past two decades in a number of western countries.¹ Data for the United States, using median ages, suggest that the decline since 1940 has been as great as that occurring during the preceding 50 years (Table I).     

Foster care and the educational attainment of Jamaican children

Though informal fostering, the placement of children in the care of relatives or friends, is common in developing countries little research has been performed to ascertain its implications for the welfare of foster children. Previous studies on fostering are generally concerned with the circumstances that result in fostering. We investigate the relationship between foster care and educational opportunities and achievement. The relationship between fostering and a childs educational achievement is crucial because education has a strong influence on the long-term welfare of the individual. Our findings are unique in that we redefine foster care to exclude children living with their biological father. This redefinition results in significantly different findings on the effect of foster care on the educational investment of the household towards foster boys. Under the new definition foster boys are significantly more likely to be educationally disadvantaged.     

Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem.     

Sex preferences for children in Ghana: the influence of educational attainment

Education influences aspects of demographic behaviour and outcomes including a child sex preference. Sex preferences of children have been studied in different societies because of its associated social and demographic implications. Using the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we examined the association between educational attainment and sex preferences of children. Findings from the study indicated that there is preference for sons (26.1%) compared to daughters (17.4%). At higher levels of education, there is a higher likelihood for no preference for a sex of a child. Among the characteristics of respondents that influenced sex preferences are: gender, lineage, religion, occupation and desired family size. Acquisition of knowledge through education to some extent alter fertility preferences and hence the need to motivate individuals to attain some level of education.     

Family structure and educational attainment of children: effects of remarriage

This study explores how remarriage alters the effect of living in a female-headed family on children's educational attainment. The analysis is based upon data from a mother/child extract taken from the 1984 March/April Match file of the Current Population Survey. Ordinary least squares regression analysis and logit analysis are used. The results are mixed. While remarriage mitigates the negative effects of single-parent family living on years of school completed and the probability of high school graduation, it exacerbates these effects on the probability of entering college by ages 18–20 years, especially for boys. Thus, while remarriage increases income and reduces time pressures compared to single-parent family living, the presence of a stepfather appears to complicate the college entrance decision.This research is based upon the Ph. D. thesis of Seung Sin Chung, submitted to the School of Human Resources and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We are grateful to John W. Graham for considerable effort in preparation of the data extract for this research as well as for comments, to Sara McLanahan for useful discussion, to John Boyd for excellent programming assistance, and to Se-jeong Yang and Yang-Suk Kim for able research assistance. This research was supported in part by NIH Grant # HD19350.     

The changing relationship between family size and educational attainment over the course of socioeconomic development: Evidence from Indonesia

Many studies from developed countries show a negative correlation between family size and children’s schooling, while results from developing countries show this association ranging from positive to neutral to negative, depending on the context. The body of evidence suggests that this relationship changes as a society develops, but this theory has been difficult to assess because the existing evidence requires comparisons across countries with different social structures and at different levels of development. The world’s fourth most populous nation in 2007, Indonesia has developed rapidly in recent decades. This context provides the opportunity to study these relationships within the same rapidly developing setting to see if and how these associations change. Results show that in urban areas, the association between family size and children’s schooling was positive for older cohorts but negative for more recent cohorts. Models using instrumental variables to address the potential endogeneity of fertility con rm these results. In contrast, rural areas show no significant association between family size and children’s schooling for any cohort. These findings show how the relationship between family size and children’s schooling can differ within the same country and change over time as contextual factors evolve with socioeconomic development.     

Remarriage patterns of black and white women: Eeassessing the role of educational attainment

Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this article illustrates the role of educational attainment in the remarriage patterns of black and white women. For whites, remarriage propensities do not differ significantly by schooling level. For blacks, on the other hand, remarriage and education are positively associated, net of the effects of other variables such as age at separation and the number of children. Very few black high school dropouts in the sample had remarried 10 years after separation. The results suggest that for blacks, those with the worst socioeconomic prospects are least likely to remarry.     

Birth order matters: the effect of family size and birth order on educational attainment

Using the British Household Panel Survey, we investigate if family size and birth order affect children’s subsequent educational attainment. Theory suggests a trade-off between child quantity and “quality” and that siblings are unlikely to receive equal shares of parental resources devoted to children’s education. We construct a new birth order index that effectively purges family size from birth order and use this to test if siblings are assigned equal shares in the family’s educational resources. We find that the shares are decreasing with birth order. Ceteris paribus, children from larger families have less education, and the family size effect does not vanish when we control for birth order. These findings are robust to numerous specification checks.

Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: evidence from Switzerland on natives and second-generation immigrants

This study applies rich data from the 2000 Swiss census to investigate the patterns of intergenerational education transmission for natives and second-generation immigrants. The level of secondary schooling attained by youth aged 17 is related to their parents’ educational outcomes based on data on the entire Swiss population. Extending economic theories of child educational attainment, we derive hypotheses regarding the patterns of intergenerational education transmission. The data yield substantial heterogeneity in intergenerational transmission across population groups. Only a small share of this heterogeneity is explained by the predictions of economic theory.

Children's residence patterns and educational attainment in rural South Africa, 1997

Using data collected by the Agincourt Health and Population Programme in a rural sub-district of South Africa's Northern Province, this paper describes the residential arrangements of a population in rural South Africa, and analyses the impact of these arrangements on children's educational attainment. Children with co-resident parents generally have higher levels of schooling than those who have one or no co-resident parents. However, having a father who is away from home as a migrant appears to benefit older children whereas, for girls aged 11 to 15, having a mother who is a migrant lowers educational attainment. Children who live in households headed by Mozambican refugees have lower levels of schooling than those who live in non-refugee households. Living in a household headed by a woman is not associated with lower levels of education and, for some age-sex groups, appears to be an advantage.     

What a difference a term makes: the effect of educational attainment on marital outcomes in the UK

In the past, students in England and Wales born within the first 5 months of the academic year could leave school one term earlier than those born later in the year. Focusing on women, those who were required to stay on an extra term more frequently hold some academic qualification. Using having been required to stay on as an exogenous factor affecting academic attainment, we find that holding a low-level academic qualification has no effect on the probability of being currently married for women aged 25 or above, but increases the probability of the husband holding some academic qualification and being economically active.     

Gender, educational attainment, and the impact of parental migration on children left behind

Estimation of the causal effect of parental migration on children’s educational attainment is complicated by the fact that migrants and nonmigrants are likely to differ in unobservable ways that also affect children’s educational outcomes. This paper suggests a novel way of addressing this selection problem by looking within the family to exploit variation in siblings’ ages at the time of parental migration. The basic assumption underlying the analysis is that parental migration will have no effect on the educational outcomes of children who are at least 20?years old because they have already completed their education. Their younger siblings, in contrast, may still be in school, and thus will be affected by the parental migration experience. The results point to a statistically significant positive effect of paternal US migration on education for girls, suggesting that pushing a father’s US migration earlier in his daughter’s life can lead to an increase in her educational attainment of up to 1?year relative to delaying migration until after she has turned 20?years old. In contrast, paternal domestic migration has no statistically significant effect on educational attainment for girls or boys, suggesting that father absence does not play a major role in determining children’s educational outcomes. Instead, these results suggest that the marginal dollars from US migrant remittances appear to enable families to further educate their daughters. Thus, policymakers should view international migration as a potential pathway by which families raise educational attainments of girls in particular.     

Rethinking certification theory and the educational development of the United States and Germany

This essay places work certification at the center of all modern educational regimes. I sketch the growth of the education, training, and certification systems of the United States and Germany in new ways, highlighting the role of their highly divergent certification regimes in shaping them. Whereas Germany's education and training system, anchored in the economy through employers’ associations and unions, accords well with human capital models, American practice, governed primarily by academic interests divorced from the economy, fits much better with credentialist theory. I consider how the absence of meaningful work certification at the secondary level in the US negatively affects educational justice and has encouraged the creation of a costly, inegalitarian system of higher education. Finally, I conclude with an assessment of human capital, signaling, control, and credentialist theories of certification, one that finds them all to some degree wanting.     

Gastarbeiter in West Germany and Switzerland: an assessment of host society-immigrant relations

West Germany and Switzerland have in general pursued similar immigration policies with respect to alien labor. In spite of a convergence in official policy and a change from temporary migration to settlement in both countries, immigrant groups in West Germany and Switzerland have displayed different attitudes and rates of integration within the host societies. Even when narrowing our discussion to one national group, the Italians, we find substantial differences persist. These cannot be attributed to the percentage of unskilled workers from Italy, intention to stay, the general social climate of the host societies, or even to political institutions such as trade unions. Rather, the higher integration and assimilation of Italians in Switzerland than in Germany appears to be related to structural and demographic factors. Unless policy-makers are aware of the importance of these factors, it is unlikely that they can adequately respond to the complexity and diversity of the problems generated by foreign workers.     

Sibship size and educational attainment. A joint test of the Confluence Model and the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

Studies on family background often explain the negative effect of sibship size on educational attainment by one of two theories: the Confluence Model (CM) or the Resource Dilution Hypothesis (RDH). However, as both theories - for substantively different reasons - predict that sibship size should have a negative effect on educational attainment most studies cannot distinguish empirically between the CM and the RDH. In this paper, I use the different theoretical predictions in the CM and RDH on the role of cognitive ability as a partial or complete mediator of the effect of sibship size to distinguish the two theories and to identify a unique RDH effect on educational attainment. Using sibling data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and a random effect Instrumental Variable model I find that, in addition to a negative effect on cognitive ability, sibship size also has a strong negative effect on educational attainment which is uniquely explained by the RDH.     

Income Comparisons Among Neighbours and Satisfaction in East and West Germany

A series of studies have suggested that changes in others’ income may be perceived differently in post-transition and capitalist societies. This paper draws on the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) matched with micro-marketing indicators of population characteristics in very tightly drawn neighbourhoods to investigate whether reactions to changes in their neighbours’ income divide the German nation. We find that the neighbourhood income effect for West Germany is negative (which is in line with the ‘relative income’ hypothesis) and slightly more marked in neighbourhoods that may be assumed to be places where social interactions between neighbours take place. In contrast, the coefficients on neighbourhood income in East Germany are positive (which is consistent with the ‘signalling’ hypothesis), but statistically not significant. This suggests not only that there is a divide between East and West Germany, but also that neighbours may not be a relevant comparison group in societies that have comparatively low levels of neighbouring.