Tracking Pupils Into Adulthood: Selective Schools and Long-Term Human Capital
Abstract
We explore the effect of selective schooling, where students are assigned to different schools by ability, on adult health, well-being and labour market outcomes. We exploit the 1960s transition from a selective to a non-selective secondary schooling system in England and Wales. The introductio3n of mixed-ability schools decreased average school quality and peer ability for high-ability pupils, while it increased them for low-ability pupils. We therefore distinguish between two treatment effects: that of high-quality school attendance for high-ability pupils and that of lower-quality school attendance for low-ability pupils, with mixed-ability schools as the alternative. We address selection bias by balancing individual pre-treatment characteristics via entropy balancing, followed by ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Selective schooling does not affect long-term health and well-being, while it marginally raises hourly wages, compared to a mixed-ability system, and school aspirations for high-ability pupils. Cognitive and non-cognitive abilities measured prior to secondary school are significantly and positively associated with all adult outcomes.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
This work was undertaken as part of a PhD thesis at the University of York. We thank Thomas Cornelissen, Sandra McNally, Emma Tominey, participants at the HEDG seminars at the University of York, the NCDS 60 Years of Our Lives conference, the RES Junior Symposium 2018 at the University of Sussex, the 4th IRDES-Dauphine AHEPE Workshop and the 3rd IZA Workshop: The Economics of Education for helpful comments. This paper uses data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), managed by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the UCL Institute of Education, and available through the UK Data Service. Boston Consulting Group, the funders, data creators and UK Data Service have no responsibility for the contents of this paper. Andrew M Jones acknowledges support by the Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (grant number MRF-2016-004) and Chiara Pastore is grateful for support from the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/J500215/1). We declare no competing interests.
Citation
Pastore, C., Rice, N. and Jones, A.M. (2024), "Tracking Pupils Into Adulthood: Selective Schools and Long-Term Human Capital", Baltagi, B.H. and Moscone, F. (Ed.) Recent Developments in Health Econometrics (Contributions to Economic Analysis, Vol. 297), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 7-36. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0573-855520240000297002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Chiara Pastore, Nigel Rice and Andrew M. Jones. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited