Institutional Features of Schooling Systems and Educational Inequality: Cross‐Country Evidence From PIRLS and PISA

Educational opportunities determine the intergenerational mobility of human capital and affect the distribution of earnings on the labour market. This paper aims at explaining cross‐country differences in educational opportunities by features of schooling systems. The theoretical model predicts that a greater differentiation of the schooling system as indicated by streaming and a large share of private schools decreases educational opportunities while more instruction time increases educational opportunities. The empirical results that are based on a difference‐in‐differences estimation approach to control for country‐specific effects support these hypotheses.