IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v21y2020i1p24-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries

Author

Listed:
  • Sander Kunst

    (Department of Sociology and Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Theresa Kuhn

    (Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Herman G van de Werfhorst

Abstract

Previous research shows a strong and consistent relationship between educational attainment and Euroscepticism. As a result, education is considered to be a powerful predictor of attitudes towards European integration. However, these findings are predominantly found using cross-sectional research designs, therefore leaving open the possibility of strong selection effects due to pre-adult experiences and dispositions which both explain educational attainment and political attitudes. To test whether schooling causally reduces Euroscepticism, this article combines data on the compulsory schooling age with seven rounds of pooled European Social Survey data (2002–2014). Using compulsory schooling reforms within a ‘fuzzy’ regression discontinuity design, the results indicate no conclusive effect of education on Euroscepticism, questioning the impact of additional schooling. Consequently, this study provides a novel insight into the much-debated divide in support for European integration between lower and higher educated.

Suggested Citation

  • Sander Kunst & Theresa Kuhn & Herman G van de Werfhorst, 2020. "Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(1), pages 24-42, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:21:y:2020:i:1:p:24-42
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116519877972
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116519877972
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116519877972?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    2. Philip Oreopoulos, 2006. "Estimating Average and Local Average Treatment Effects of Education when Compulsory Schooling Laws Really Matter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 152-175, March.
    3. Theresa Kuhn, 2012. "Why Educational Exchange Programmes Miss Their Mark: Cross-Border Mobility, Education and European Identity," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(6), pages 994-1010, November.
    4. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    5. Anderson, Christopher J. & Reichert, M. Shawn, 1995. "Economic Benefits and Support for Membership in the E.U.: A Cross-National Analysis," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 231-249, September.
    6. Giorgio Brunello & Margherita Fort & Guglielmo Weber, 2009. "Changes in Compulsory Schooling, Education and the Distribution of Wages in Europe," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 516-539, March.
    7. Daniel Bischof, 2017. "New graphic schemes for Stata: plotplain and plottig," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 17(3), pages 748-759, September.
    8. Yang, Songtao, 2019. "Does education foster trust? Evidence from compulsory schooling reform in the UK," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 48-60.
    9. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    10. Parinduri, Rasyad A., 2014. "Do children spend too much time in schools? Evidence from a longer school year in Indonesia," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 89-104.
    11. Persson, Mikael, 2015. "Education and Political Participation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 689-703, July.
    12. d׳Hombres, Béatrice & Nunziata, Luca, 2016. "Wish you were here? Quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of education on self-reported attitude toward immigrants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 201-224.
    13. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Max H. Farrell & Roc ́ıo Titiunik, 2017. "rdrobust: Software for regression-discontinuity designs," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 17(2), pages 372-404, June.
    14. Persson, Mikael & Lindgren, Karl-Oskar & Oskarsson, Sven, 2016. "How does education affect adolescents’ political development?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 182-193.
    15. Busemeyer, Marius R. & Trampusch, Christine, 2011. "Review Article: Comparative Political Science and the Study of Education," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(2), pages 413-443, April.
    16. Cavaille, Charlotte & Marshall, John, 2019. "Education and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Reforms across Western Europe," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 254-263, February.
    17. Teney, Céline & Lacewell, Onawa Promise & De Wilde, Pieter, 2014. "Winners and losers of globalization in Europe: attitudes and ideologies," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6(4), pages 575-595.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sander Kunst & Theresa Kuhn & Herman G van de Werfhorst, 2023. "As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined? The role of parental versus own education for openness towards globalisation," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(2), pages 264-285, June.
    2. Klaus Armingeon, 2021. "Fiscal solidarity: The conditional role of political knowledge," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(1), pages 133-154, March.
    3. Deole, Sumit S. & Zeydanli, Tugba, 2021. "Does education predict gender role attitudes?: Evidence from European datasets," GLO Discussion Paper Series 793, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Dominik Schraff & Ronja Sczepanski, 2022. "United or divided in diversity? The heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity on European and national identities," European Union Politics, , vol. 23(2), pages 236-258, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcus Österman, 2021. "Can We Trust Education for Fostering Trust? Quasi-experimental Evidence on the Effect of Education and Tracking on Social Trust," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 211-233, February.
    2. Akgündüz, Yusuf Emre & Akyol, Pelin & Aydemir, Abdurrahman B. & Demirci, Murat & Kirdar, Murat Güray, 2023. "Maternal Education and Early Child Development: The Roles of Parental Support for Learning, Learning Materials, and Father Characteristics," IZA Discussion Papers 16328, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Albarrán, Pedro & Hidalgo-Hidalgo, Marisa & Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo, 2020. "Education and adult health: Is there a causal effect?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    4. Murat G. Kırdar & Meltem Dayıoğlu & İsmet Koç, 2016. "Does Longer Compulsory Education Equalize Schooling by Gender and Rural/Urban Residence?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(3), pages 549-579.
    5. Gurgand, Marc & Lorenceau, Adrien & Mélonio, Thomas, 2023. "Student loans: Credit constraints and higher education in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    6. Dursun, Bahadır & Cesur, Resul & Mocan, Naci, 2018. "The Impact of Education on Health Outcomes and Behaviors in a Middle-Income, Low-Education Country," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 94-114.
    7. Andrew E Clark & Rong Zhu, 2023. "Taking Back Control? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Retirement on Locus of Control," Working Papers halshs-04335808, HAL.
    8. Gray, Daniel & Montagnoli, Alberto & Moro, Mirko, 2021. "Does education improve financial behaviors? Quasi-experimental evidence from Britain," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 481-507.
    9. Blaise Melly & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Estimation, Inference, and Interpretation in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Diskussionsschriften dp2016, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    10. Mazzutti, Caio Cícero Toledo Piza da Costa, 2016. "Three essays on the causal impacts of child labour laws in Brazil," Economics PhD Theses 0616, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    11. Jiang, Wei & Lu, Yi & Xie, Huihua, 2020. "Education and mental health: Evidence and mechanisms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 407-437.
    12. Mario Fiorini & Katrien Stevens, 2021. "Scrutinizing the Monotonicity Assumption in IV and fuzzy RD designs," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(6), pages 1475-1526, December.
    13. Assaad, Ragui & Aydemir, Abdurrahman B. & Dayioglu-Tayfur, Meltem & Kirdar, Murat Güray, 2023. "Wage Returns to Human Capital Resulting from an Extra Year of Primary School: Evidence from Egypt," IZA Discussion Papers 16037, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Aydemir, Abdurrahman & Murat, Kirdar, 2013. "Estimates of the Return to Schooling in a Developing Country: Evidence from a Major Policy Reform in Turkey," MPRA Paper 51938, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Adamecz-Völgyi, Anna, 2022. "Oktatási reformok hatása kérdőíves adatokon. Befolyásolják-e a reformok a részvételt, a lemorzsolódást és a válaszadást? [Education reforms as instrumental variables for education using survey data," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1298-1323.
    16. Meyer, Andrew G., 2017. "The impact of education on political ideology: Evidence from European compulsory education reforms," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 9-23.
    17. Myoung-Jae Lee & Hyae-Chong Shim & Sang Soo Park, 2023. "Regression Discontinuity with Integer Score and Non-Integer Cutoff," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 39, pages 73-101.
    18. Goncalo Lima & Luis Catela Nunes & Ana Balcao Reis & Maria do Carmo Seabra, 2022. "No country for young kids? The effects of school starting age throughout childhood and beyond," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp639, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    19. Daniel Gray & Alberto Montagnoli & Mirko Moro, 2017. "Does education improve financial outcomes? Quasi-experimental evidence from Britain," Working Papers 2017010, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    20. Guido Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2019. "Optimized Regression Discontinuity Designs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 264-278, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:21:y:2020:i:1:p:24-42. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.