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Poor little children: The socioeconomic gap in parental responses to school disadvantage

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  • Berniell, Inés
  • Estrada, Ricardo

Abstract

This paper studies how parents react to a widely-used school policy that puts some children at a learning disadvantage: age at school entry. To do so, we analyze Spanish data on parental investments and find that college-educated parents increase their time investments and choose better schools for children who are younger than their classmates at school entry, while non-college-educated parents do not do any of both. Consistent with this compensating behavior, we document a lower age-at-school-entry penalty among children with college-educated parents.

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  • Berniell, Inés & Estrada, Ricardo, 2020. "Poor little children: The socioeconomic gap in parental responses to school disadvantage," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:66:y:2020:i:c:s092753712030083x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101879
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    Cited by:

    1. Cristina Borra & Libertad González Luna & David Patiño, 2021. "Maternal age and infant health," Economics Working Papers 1791, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Borra, Cristina & González, Libertad & Patiño, David, 2023. "School Starting Age and Infant Health," IZA Discussion Papers 16676, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Caterina Calsamiglia & Annalisa Loviglio, 2020. "Maturity and school outcomes in an inflexible system: evidence from Catalonia," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-49, March.
    4. Berniell, Lucila & Caccianini, Antonella & Sanguinetti, Ignacio, . "Digitalizacio\x{0301}n de las licencias me\x{0301}dicas en el sistema educativo pu\x{0301}blico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires: Modernizacio\x{0301}n del Estado para una mejor educacio\x{0301}n," Books, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica, number 1548.
    5. Chang, Simon & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Salamanca, Nicolás, 2022. "Parents’ responses to teacher qualifications," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 419-446.
    6. Nora Lustig & Valentina Martinez Pabon & Guido Neidhöfer & Mariano Tommasi, 2020. "Short and Long-Run Distributional Impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America," Working Papers 2013, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    7. Ismael Sanz & J .D. Tenaa, 2020. "A Natural Experiment on the Effect of Instruction Time and Quality: Lessons for the Covid-19 Outbreak," Working Papers 202032, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    8. Sergi Sánchez-Coll, 2023. "Born this way: the effect of an unexpected child benefit at birth on longer-term educational outcomes," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 105-141, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Parental investments; Age at school entry; Education inequality; Compensating behavior;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General

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