Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14547
Authors: Ester Faia
Abstract: Using PISA data for all waves and countries, it is shown that family cultural and economic background has bigger influence than school characteristics and quality on adolescents’ math, reading and science scores. Women education, a proxy for women empowerment, has an added and increasing effect, when controlling for assortative mating. Their added value peaks at intermediate levels of education, but declines afterwards, when controlling for educational homogamy. A model with households’ collective bargaining, warm glow preferences and human capital accumulation can rationalize the evidence. Through the lens of the model, mothers’ higher impact is due either to higher devotion to child-rearing, which increases in presence of a gender wage gap, or to a within-household bargaining that raises in education, or else the empowerment externality.
Keywords: educational inequality; women empowerment; collective bargaining
JEL Codes: E0; E5; G01
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| mothers' education (I24) | children's educational attainment (I21) |
| family cultural background (J12) | children's math, reading, and science scores (I21) |
| mothers' education (I24) | investment in children's education (I21) |
| family economic background (D19) | children's educational outcomes (I21) |
| family background (cultural and economic) (I24) | children's educational outcomes (I21) |
| mothers' education (higher) (I24) | investment in children's education (I21) |
| mothers' education (higher) (I24) | children's educational outcomes (I21) |