Working Paper: NBER ID: w20475
Authors: Sebastian Edwards; Alvaro Garcia Marin
Abstract: We investigate whether the inclusion of social rights in political constitutions affects social performance. More specifically, we analyze whether including the right to education in the constitution has been related to better "educational outcomes." We rely on data for 61 countries that participated in the 2012 PISA tests. Our results are strong and robust to the estimation technique: we find that there is no evidence that including the right to education in the constitution has been associated with higher test scores. The quality of education depends on socioeconomic, structural, and policy variables, such as expenditure per student, the teacher-pupil ratio, and families' background. When these covariates are excluded, the relation between the strength of constitutional educational rights and the quality of education is negative and statistically significant. These results are important for emerging countries that are discussing the adoption of new constitutions, such as Thailand and Chile.
Keywords: Constitutional Rights; Education; PISA; Social Rights
JEL Codes: I24; I28; K4; K49; O1; O38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Constitutional rights to education (I28) | Educational outcomes (I21) |
| Constitutional rights to education (I28) | Educational inputs (I21) |
| Educational inputs (I21) | Educational outcomes (I21) |
| Constitutional rights to education (I28) | Societal ethos valuing education (I24) |
| Societal ethos valuing education (I24) | Educational outcomes (I21) |
| Constitutional rights to education (I28) | Average test scores (C12) |
| Socioeconomic factors (P23) | Educational outcomes (I21) |