The role of attitudes and behaviours in explaining socioeconomic differences in attainment at age 16

(2010) - Haroon Chowdry, Claire Crawford, Alissa Goodman

Journal: Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies
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DOI:: http://dx.doi.org/10.14301/llcs.v2i1.141
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Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #Attainment
Cite Key:: [@Chowdry2010]

Abstract

It is well known that children growing up in poor families leave school with considerably lower qualifications than children from better off backgrounds. Using a simple decomposition analysis, we show that around two fifths of the socio- economic gap in attainment at age 16 can be accounted for by attainment at age 11, suggesting that circumstances and invest ments made considerably earlier in the child’s life explain a sizable proportion of the gap in test scores between young people from rich and poor families. However, we also find that differences in the attitudes and behaviours of young people and their parents during the teenage years play a key role in explaining the richpoor gap in GCSE1 JEL codes: I20, I32 attainment: together, they explain a further quarter of the gap at age 16, and two fifths of the small increase in this gap between ages 11 and 16. On this basis, our results suggest that while the notion that “skills beget skills” implies that the most effective policies in terms of raising the attainment of young people from poor families are likely to be those enacted before children reach secondary school, policies that aim to reduce differences in attitudes and behaviours between the poorest children and those from better-off backgrounds during the teenage years may also make a significant contribution towards lowering the gap in achievement between young people from the richest and poorest families at age 16.

Notes

“we show that around two fifths of the socio-economic gap in attainment at age 16 can be accounted for by attainment at age 11, suggesting that circumstances and investments made considerably earlier in the child’s life explain a sizable proportion of the gap in test scores between young people from rich and poor families” (Chowdry et al., 2010, p. 59)

“we also find that differences in the attitudes and behaviours of young people and their parents during the teenage years play a key role in explaining the richpoor gap in GCSE1 JEL codes: I20, I32” (Chowdry et al., 2010, p. 59)

“It is now widely accepted within the economics literature and elsewhere that an immediate lack of income, or access to other financial resources (‘credit constraints’) during the teenage years, is not largely responsible for the socio-economic gap in formal educational attainment, or in choices about whether to stay on in post-compulsory schooling or go to university (see Cameron and Taber 2004, Cameron and Heckman 1998 and 2001, and Carneiro and Heckman 2002, for the US; and Dearden et al 2004, and Chowdry et al 2008, for evidence from the UK).” (Chowdry et al., 2010, p. 60)

“we cannot be sure that there is no unobserved heterogeneity (unobserved factors which might be correlated with both the attitudes and behaviours we observe and with educational attainment) or reverse causation (that educational attainment might affect attitudes and behaviours rather than the other way round) which might plausibly account for some or all of the statistical associations we uncover” (Chowdry et al., 2010, p. 61)