Choice at Sixteen

(1989) - John Micklewright

Journal: Economica
Link:: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2554492
DOI:: 10.2307/2554492
Links::
Tags:: #paper #NCDS #Transition #school-to-work #Attainment #LabourMarket
Cite Key:: [@Micklewright1989]

Abstract

The proportion of 16-year-olds in Britain who stay on at school is low by OECD standards. This paper examines the probability of completing education at the minimum legal age using micro data on individuals. Parameter estimates of a reduced-form logit model of the leaving probability are obtained for both boys and girls. The rich data set used allows the separate effects of family, school and ability to be assessed. Family background in the form of class and parental education is shown to have a large effect even when ability and school type are controlled for.

Notes

“The proportion of 16-year-olds in Britain who stay on at school is low by OECD standards.” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 25)

“Family background in the form of class and parental education is shown to have a large effect even when ability and school type are controlled for.” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 25)

“he 1987 Conservative government's Secretary of State for Education said he wished it to become 'an almost natural thing for young people to stay on at school',” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 25)

“This means that it is not until age 23 that we observe the leaving date, hence the inability to conduct the present research before the recent release of NCDS4 data.6” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 26)

“THE NATIONAL CHILD DEVELOPMENT STUDY” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 26) somewhat recreate

“Even where an interview was carried out, the answers to certain key questions may be missing; for instance, income data are missing from some 20 per cent of cases where a parental interview at NCDS3 was conducted.” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 27)

“econd, we need to acknowledge that the NCDS children reached minimum school-leaving age in 1974 at a time when the youth labour market was radically different from now. Only four per cent of members of the NCDS cohort who left school in 1974 were unemployed in January 1975” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 27)

“The minimum school-leaving age, currently 16, was raised from 15 in September 1972, a level it had been at for some 25 years. Children born in 1958, i.e. the NCDS children, were the first full birth year to be affecte” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 27)

“, family background as measured by parental education, class and numbers of siblings was found to have a substantial impact. Of more interest and immediate policy relevance is the fact that between half and two-thirds of this effect remains when controls for the children's academic ability and type of school are introduced.” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 36)

“. A manual background with parents who did not themselves stay on leads to a predicted probability of leaving of 33 per cent if a boy and 27 per cent if a girl, even if he or she had no siblin” (Micklewright, 1989, p. 36)