'EVERY CATHOLIC CHILD IN A CATHOLIC SCHOOL': HISTORICAL RESISTANCE TO STATE SCHOOLING, CONTEMPORARY PRIVATE COMPETITION AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT ACROSS COUNTRIES

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: West, Martin R.; Woessmann, Ludger
• 署名单位: Harvard University; University of Munich
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02375.x
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: F229-F255
• 关键词: education; vouchers; origins

摘要

Nineteenth-century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today. We use this historical pattern as a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of contemporary private competition on student achievement in cross-country student-level analyses. Our results show that larger shares of privately operated schools lead to better student achievement in mathematics, science and reading, and to lower total education spending, even after controlling for current Catholic shares.