Journal article
Explaining the socio-economic status school completion gap
C Polidano, B Hanel, H Buddelmeyer
Education Economics | Published : 2013
Abstract
Relatively low rates of school completion among students from low socio-economic backgrounds is a key driver of intergenerational inequality. Linking data from the Programme for International Student Assessment with data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth, we use a decomposition framework to explain the gap in school completion rates by socio-economic status (SES). The two most important contributing factors are found to be lower educational aspirations of low SES students and their parents and lower numeracy and reading test scores at age 15. Differences in school characteristics by SES are estimated to be relatively unimportant. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Grants
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors thank all those who commented on drafts of this paper, including two anonymous referees, John Haisken-DeNew, Chris Ryan and participants of the 3rd International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education and the 24th European Association of Labour Economists Annual Conference. The research was partly funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) under the Social Policy Research Services Agreement (2010-2014) with the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of DEEWR or the Melbourne Institute.