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Education Policy and Equality of Opportunity
Author(s) -
Schütz Gabriela,
Ursprung Heinrich W.,
Wößmann Ludger
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6435.2008.00402.x
Subject(s) - tracking (education) , equal opportunity , demographic economics , gender equality , variation (astronomy) , public economics , economics , political science , sociology , labour economics , pedagogy , gender studies , physics , astrophysics
SUMMARY We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. Using cross‐country variation in education policies and its interaction with family background at the student level, we then estimate how equality is related to organizational features of the education system. We find that equality of opportunity is positively related to late tracking into different school types and to longer pre‐school education. Pre‐school enrollment has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with equality. Equality is negatively related to private school financing, but positively to private provision.