Choosing a school: the impact of social class on the primary school decision‐making process

One of the objectives of recent government educational reform is greater emphasis on parental choice of school. In consequence, schools are increasingly exposed to competition and in order to maintain pupil numbers will have to become more responsive to their customers. This study, drawing from semi‐structured interviews, examines the process of parental choice of primary school. There is a consensus among parents as to the importance of the decision being taken and regarding the influential evaluative criteria. However, during the early stages of the decision‐making process there are variations between different groups of parents, in particular first time choosers and those with a child already at school, but most especially between different socio‐economic groups. Implications for the primary schools' marketing strategy are considered. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

EDUCATING AMARETCH: PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR THE POOR AND THE NEW FRONTIER FOR INVESTORS

The accepted wisdom says that the poor need billions of dollars more in donor aid for state education. But this ignores the reality that poor parents are abandoning government schools to send their children to 'budget' private schools that charge very low fees, affordable to parents on minimum wages. Recent research shows that private schools for the poor are superior to government schools – teachers are more committed, the provision of inputs better and educational outcomes better – even after controlling for background variables. All this is accomplished for a fraction of the per-pupil teacher cost of government schools. The development community could therefore assist the poor by extending access to private schools through targeted vouchers. There are also opportunities for investors to contribute through microfinance-type loans, dedicated education investment funds and joint ventures with educational entrepreneurs, including the development of brands of budget private schools to help solve the information problem facing poor parents.     

Decreasing average cost in private schools,existence of majority voting equilibrium,and a policy analysis for Turkey

The existing models of mixed public–private school systems usually capture only the decreasing average cost faced by public schools, whereas empirical studies find evidence of it for private schools as well. Motivated by this, an equilibrium model of a mixed public–private school system is studied in this paper, whereby private schools also face decreasing average cost over enrollment. In the model, households, heterogeneous with respect to exogenously specified income and child’s ability, choose among a public and a private school. Private school charges tuition whereas public school is free. Public school spending is financed by income tax revenue collected from all households and the tax rate is determined via majority voting. Achievement of a child depends on its ability and education spending. Under the assumptions on the parameters of the model, a joint lognormal distribution of income and ability, and a Cobb–Douglas utility, majority voting equilibrium is numerically shown to exist. The model is calibrated to match certain statistics from the 2013 Turkish data. Using the calibrated model, we compare the benchmark for a mixed public–private school system with a pure public school system to understand the impact of shutting down some of the private schools in Turkey following the July 15 coup attempt. We find that mean achievement and variance of achievement after high school is \(0.039\%\) higher and \(0.013\%\) lower respectively in a pure public school system.     

Family Size and Educational Investments in Children: Evidence from Private Tutoring Expenditures in South Korea*

Relying on private tutoring expenditures in South Korea, this paper examines whether large family size has a strong negative impact on educational investments in children. To deal with endogeneity of family size, the paper employs a non‐parametric bounding method as well as an instrumental variables method. Our primary finding is that quantity–quality trade‐offs in educational investments function in a way that varies by the sex of the child. While there is a non‐negligible negative effect of large family size on educational investments for girls, there is little if any impact on those for boys. Son preferences traditionally shown by Korean parents seem to underlie such empirical findings.     

Family Arrangements and Children's Education Among Migrants: A Case Study of China

As China is experiencing an urban revolution with massive rural-to-urban migration, millions of children are profoundly affected by their parents’ migration and their decisions about family arrangements. With the discriminatory hukou system and harsh living conditions in cities, the dilemma migrant parents face is whether they should take their children with them to the city or leave them behind. This decision determines the household, school and community environments that children live in, which, in turn, shape their well-being. With a unique strategy of comparing ‘left-behind children’ to ‘migrant children’ and a gendered perspective, this article examines how different family arrangements among migrants and consequent housing conditions and gender dynamics affect children's educational well-being. Our findings demonstrate the complex impact of family arrangements on children, which is conditioned by wage income and the gender of the absent parent and the child. We find that children from less favorable socio-economic backgrounds benefit more from moving to cities. Children living with both parents and those living with their mother or grandparents tend to do better. While the effect of housing conditions is marginal, family arrangements have a gendered effect on children. Related policy recommendations are provided.     

An Analysis of Kin-Provided Child Care in the Context of Intrafamily ExchangesLinking Components of Family Support for Parents Raising Young Children

Little is known about why parents choose kin-provided child care and less is known about how kin-provided child care is related to other forms of in-kind support from relatives close-at-hand. Previous models of the choice of kin-provided child care assumed that the presence of other forms of in-kind support from relatives nearby was inconsequential to estimating effects of economic and demographic factors on the decision to use kin-provided child care. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Class of 1972, this study shows that this assumption is incorrect because use of kin-provided child care and intrafamily in-kind resource exchanges are interrelated. When the association between use of kin-provided child care and the presence of other family in-kind exchanges is ignored, the study shows that estimated effects for income, the price of child care, and maternal characteristics are underestimated. The findings provide a better understanding of why parents choose kin-provided child care by confirming that this decision is a part of a larger set of parental decisions about involvement in resource exchanges within extended families. My findings support recent child care bills aiming to increase parental choice of child care provider, broaden the definition of a provider to include non-coresident relatives, and expand price subsidies for kin-provided child care.     

The desegregating effect of school tracking

This paper makes the following point: “detracking” schools, that is preventing them from allocating students to classes according to their ability, may lead to an increase in income residential segregation. It does so in a simple model where households care about the school peer group of their children. If ability and income are positively correlated, tracking implies that some high income households face the choice of either living in the areas where most of the other high income households live and having their child assigned to the low track, or instead living in lower income neighbourhoods where their child would be in the high track. Under mild conditions, tracking leads to an equilibrium with partial income desegregation where perfect income segregation would be the only stable outcome without tracking.     

Consumers’ fluid milk consumption behaviors in TURKEY: an application of multinomial logit model

Although consumers’ fluid milk consumption behavior related to skim milk, low fat milk and whole milk have attracted a lot of attention in the last decade, relatively a few studies have examined the consumers’ unprocessed and processed fluid milk consumption. The objective of this study was to analyze consumers’ fluid milk consumption and preference in Turkey by using cross-sectional national survey data. The Chi-square test of independence and multinomial logit procedure were used to investigate the selected socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of consumers that determine households’ fluid milk consumption choices between unprocessed fluid milk, processed fluid milk and non-consumption choices. Empirical results indicate that unprocessed fluid milk preference is related positively to household size, number of children in family, household income, and age of housewife; and negatively to education level and employment status of housewife. On the other hand, processed fluid milk preferences are related positively to household income, number of children in households and education level of housewife and negatively to household size and age of housewife.     

Nepotism,incentives and the academic success of college students

This study investigates the role of parent-owned businesses on children's college success and post-college aspirations by using a unique data set from a private university in Turkey. The data set matches college students' administrative records with survey responses. The presence of self-employed parents and family businesses has a strong negative association with college success even after accounting for observed ability, parental background, and various individual characteristics. An explanation for the lower GPAs of the children of self-employed parents is that in the presence of parent-owned businesses students have a larger set of post-graduation options and are more likely to plan on becoming self-employed due to intergenerational transfer of self-employment. Hence, these students may not exert as much effort in acquiring the task-specific career-oriented human capital taught in college. In line with expectations, we find that the children of self-employed parents are more likely to have entrepreneurial intent and are less likely to plan to attend graduate school.     

The religious factor in private education

We quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by calibrating a political economy model of school choice—among public, private-nonsectarian and subsidized religious schools—in which parents differ in their incomes and in their preferences for religious education. This shows strong latent demand for religious schooling, conditioned on current subsidized tuition levels in parochial schools, which is suppressed by the need to “pay twice” for private education. Applying the results of the calibration to gauge the effect of means-tested school voucher programs on religious and nonsectarian private enrollment, we find that when the amount of the voucher is relatively small, including subsidized religious schools in such programs is necessary for providing low-income families effective access to private education.     

Evidence That the Presence of a Half-Sibling Negatively Impacts a Child's Personal Development

A bstract .   This paper examines the relationship between a child's family structure and his or her development. While most prior research in this area has defined a child's family structure according to his or her relationship to adults in the household, this study examines the relationship of the child to not only adults but also other children in the household. We provide evidence that half-siblings brought into the household from previous relationships affect the well-being of children born into a subsequent marriage who live with both of their biological parents. Stepchildren and children living with both biological parents exhibited more behavior problems and scored worse on reading achievement tests when half-siblings were present. In contrast, stepchildren living without half-siblings in the home fared no worse than biological children without half-siblings. These results not only highlight a previously overlooked at-risk group (children living with half-siblings brought into the household from a parent's prior relationship), but they also illustrate the potential ramifications of classifying children into family structures based on their individual relationship with the householders, rather than based on the family types. The authors illustrate the relevance of these findings to current policy-making decisions regarding marriage promotion policies and child support legislation.     

Child-custody reform, marital investment in children, and the labor supply of married mothers

Research on child custody primarily focuses on the well-being of children following divorce. We extend this literature by examining how the prospect of joint child custody affects within-marriage investment in children through changes in household bargaining power. Variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states provides a natural-experiment framework with which to examine within-marriage investment in children. The probability of children's private school attendance declines by 12% in states that adopt joint-custody laws. We also find evidence linking joint-custody reform to higher rates of labor force participation for married mothers, which may indicate less time devoted household production.     

UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS AND LONG-TERM CHILD OUTCOMES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

What are the long-term effects of universal preschool programs on child outcomes? We review 26 studies using natural experiments to estimate the effects of universal preschool programs for children aged 0–6 years on child outcomes measured from third grade to adulthood. Studies comparing universal preschool with a mix of parental, family, and private modes of care show mixed effects on test scores and on measures related to health, well-being, and behavior. All estimates for outcomes related to adequate primary and secondary school progression, years of schooling, highest degree completed, employment, and earnings indicate beneficial average effects of universal preschool programs. Three of the included studies calculate benefits-to-costs ratios and find ratios clearly above one. Universal preschool tends to be more beneficial for children with low socioeconomic status and there are not consistently different effects for boys or girls. Only three studies compare two alternative types of universal preschool programs in terms of long-term outcomes.     

Maternal employment,migration, and child development

We analyze the roles of and interrelationships among school inputs and parental inputs in affecting child development through the specification and estimation of a behavioral model of household migration and maternal employment decisions. We integrate information on these decisions with observations on child outcomes over a 13-year period from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). We find that the impact of our school quality measures diminishes by factors of 2 to 4 after accounting for the fact that families may choose where to live in part based on school characteristics and labor market opportunities. The positive statistical relationship between child outcomes and maternal employment reverses sign and remains statistically significant after controlling for its possible endogeneity. Our estimates imply that when parental responses are taken into account, policy changes in school quality end up having only minor impacts on child test scores.     

Household Shocks and Education Investments in Madagascar

This paper investigates the impact of exogenous shocks to household income, assets and labour supply on children's school attendance in Madagascar. The analysis uses a unique data set with 10 years of recall data on school attendance and household shocks. We find that the probability of a child dropping out of school increases significantly when the household experiences an illness, death or asset shock. We propose a test to distinguish whether the impact of shocks on school attendance can be attributed to credit constraints, labour market rigidities, or a combination of the two. The results suggest that credit constraints, rather than labour market rigidities, explain the inability of households in Madagascar to keep their children in school during times of economic stress.     

Household production, full consumption and the costs of children

Recent work criticises both the logic and relevance of the theoretical basis of the approach to estimating the costs of raising children adopted in much of the economics literature. This tends to be restricted purely to models in which the household members consume market goods with given household income. The “costs of children” are perceived essentially as market consumption costs. This ignores the fact that an important, possibly preponderant element of child costs takes the form of parental time, which must be diverted from alternative uses such as market work, other household production activities, and leisure, to care for children. The studies also ignore the question of the differential incidence of child costs on adult members of the household. In this paper, we first of all argue that a satisfactory theoretical approach to modelling child costs must simultaneously incorporate an “individualistic” formulation of the household and a formal treatment of household production. We then provide such a model. Using data from a time use survey we estimate specialised versions of the model for families with two children and use the results to derive the intra-family distribution of resources and implied child-rearing costs.     

Measuring the Benefits of Homeowning: Effects on Children

In this paper we examine whether homeowning benefits children by testing whether children of homeowners stay in school longer than children of renters and whether daughters of homeowners are less likely to have children as teenagers than daughters of renters. We use both probit models and a bivariate probit technique which takes account of possible selection bias due to differences between parents who choose to own versus rent. We find in several data sets that both effects are statistically significant and quantitatively important—particularly for low-income households. We also estimate that the dollar benefit per low- income household of parents being homeowners rather than renters is at least $31,000.     

A finite‐sample hierarchical analysis of wage variation across public high schools: evidence from the NLSY and high school and beyond

Using data from both the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and High School and Beyond (HSB), we investigate if public high schools differ in the “production” of earnings and if rates of return to future education vary with public high school attended. Given evidence of such variation, we seek to explain why schools differ by proposing that standard measures of school “quality” as well as proxies for community characteristics can explain the observed parameter variation across high schools. Since analysis of widely‐used data sets such as the NLSY and HSB necessarily involves observing only a few students per high school, we employ an exact finite sample estimation approach. We find evidence that schools differ and that most proxies for high school quality play modest roles in explaining the variation in outcomes across public high schools. We do find evidence that the education of the teachers in the high school as well as the average family income associated with students in the school play a small part in explaining variation at the school‐level. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do charter schools crowd out private school enrollment? Evidence from Michigan

Charter schools have been one of the most important dimensions of recent school reform measures in the United States. Though there have been numerous studies on the effects of charter schools, these have mostly been confined to analyzing their effects on student achievement, student demographic composition, parental satisfaction, and the competitive effects on traditional public schools. This study departs from the existing literature by investigating the effect of charter schools on enrollment in private schools. To investigate this issue empirically, we focus on the state of Michigan where there was a significant spread of charter schools in the nineties. Using data on private school enrollment from biennial NCES private school surveys, and using a fixed effects as well as an instrumental variables strategy that exploits exogenous variation from Michigan charter law, we investigate the effect of charter school penetration on private school enrollment. We do not find any causal evidence that charter schools led to a decline in enrollment in the private schools. Further, we do not find evidence that enrollments in Catholic or other religious schools were affected differently from those in non-religious private schools. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks.     

THE REGULATION OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS SERVING LOW‐INCOME FAMILIES IN HYDERABAD,INDIA: AN AUSTRIAN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE1

It is the intention of government that private schools in Hyderabad are prevented by regulation from exhibiting the basic manifestations of competitive markets ‐ low prices, innovation, good service and so on. However, private schools do, in practice, manifest these features. This paradox is resolved because regulations are not enforced in practice, with the acceptance of bribes by government officials being common. As a result of ‘extra‐legal’ activity, private schools are able to offer a better service to the poor than if regulations had been enforced.