Does school privatization improve educational achievement? Evidence from Sweden's voucher reform

Arbeitspapier

This paper evaluates general achievement effects of choice and competition between private and public schools at the nine-year school level by assessing a radical voucher reform that was implemented in Sweden in 1992. Starting from a situation where the public schools essentially were monopolists on all local school markets, the degree of privatization has developed very differently across municipalities over time as a result of this reform. We estimate the impact of an increase in private enrolment on short, medium and long-term educational outcomes of all pupils using within-municipality variation over time, and control for differential pre-reform and concurrent municipality trends. We find that an increase in the private school share moderately improves short-term educational outcomes such as 9th-grade GPA and the fraction of students who choose an academic high school track. However, we do not find any impact on medium or long-term educational outcomes such as high school GPA, university attainment or years of schooling. We conclude that the first-order short-term effect is too small to yield lasting positive effects.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 3691

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Educational Finance; Financial Aid
• Subject: Private schooling ; choice ; competition ; educational achievement ; Allgemeinbildende Schule ; Privatschule ; Voucher ; Wettbewerb ; Bildungsniveau ; Schweden

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Böhlmark, Anders ; Lindahl, Mikael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2008

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/35011
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2008100922
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET