The Role of Out of School Factors on Student Performance and Educational Attainment

Abstract

Both developed and developing countries need to address large, persistent education gaps between students of different backgrounds. Among the debates surrounding these education gaps, an important one centers on influences of outside school settings. Contributing to this debate, my dissertation investigates three pathways by which inequality outside school can influence inequality inside school. Essay one explores a pathway by which civil conflict can affect educational attainment. I show that in the middle of civil conflicts, economic booms (specifically oil price booms in Colombia) have negative effects on primary school enrollment. This is because the rapacity over resources increases violence, which likely undermines any expected positive effect of oil resources on school enrollment. This result implies that while economic booms can provide short-term benefits, they can undermine the long-term economic development of a region. This finding has relevance for regions rich in natural resources and suffering from civil conflicts, such as Iran, Libya, Iraq, Kuwait or Qatar. Essay two examines a pathway between students’ non-cognitive skills (motivation, persistence, and impulse control) and educational attainment. This study, coauthored with Jonathan Hershaff, proposes an inexpensive, objective measure of non-cognitive skills consisting of the incidence of skipping questions on a statewide standardized test. This exam has no penalties for guessing, which means that students would benefit more from guessing than from leaving questions blank. Skipping questions is then a sub-optimal choice likely related to reduced levels of important non-cognitive skills. We show that conditional on test scores, the incidence of skipping questions in middle school is consistently related with educational outcomes in high school and college (grade repetition, dropping out and 4-year college attendance).

Essay three examines the pathway between household composition and students’ educational attainment. I examine the effects of childcare programs on the education and time use of older siblings of participating children. The results demonstrate that availability of childcare increases older sisters’ involvement in housework, but does not affect their school enrollment and attendance rates. The access to nursery services likely incentivize maternal labor supply, transferring major household responsibilities from mothers to older sisters in the household.