The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education reform in Sweden which was implemented in the 60s. The reform was preceded by a "social experiment" in which only a proportion of municipalities received the new school system. We use survey data linked with Tax records covering 10% of one of the cohorts who were educated during the experimental period, to evaluate the impact of the reform on educational attainment and earnings. We find significant increases in the educational attainment of individuals from poorer backgrounds. We also find that the largest impact on earnings was for higher ability individuals from poorer backgrounds. In addition we estimate the returns to education for those affected by the reform. By exploiting the differential impact of the reform by county we are able, in some cases, to distinguish its direct effect on earnings from the effect it had by increasing the quantity of education. We find that the main source of increased earnings came from increasing educational attainment.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for Fiscal Studies in its series IFS Working Papers with number
W99/10.
Length: 63 pp. Date of creation: Oct 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:99/10
Contact details of provider: Postal: The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE Phone: (+44) 020 7291 4800 Fax: (+44) 020 7323 4780 Email: Web page: http://www.ifs.org.uk
Order Information: Postal: The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE Email:
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Emma Hyman).
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.