School quality and the return to schooling in Britain: New evidence from a large-scale compulsory schooling reform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Clark, Damon
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Irvine; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104902
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Returns to schooling; Compulsory schooling reforms; School quality; tracking

摘要

What is the causal effect of schooling on subsequent labor market outcomes? In this paper I contribute evidence on this question by re-examining a British compulsory schooling reform that yields large-scale and quasi-experimental variation in schooling. First, I note that this reform was introduced in 1947, when British students attended higher-track (for the top 20%) or lower-track (for the rest) secondary schools. The reform increased the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15 and I show that the vast majority (over 95%) of affected students attended lower-track schools. Second, I show that the additional schooling induced by the reform had close to zero impact on a range of labor market outcomes. Third, I attribute these findings to the quality of these lower-track schools, which I argue was low along several dimensions. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).