Income Equality, School Performance and Educational Mobility

Arbeitspapier

Is income equality a precondition for higher school performance and higher educational mobility? Or is the opposite true? We test empirically whether school performance and intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is depending on income equality on the local level. Using Swiss data, we take advantage of an exogenous variation across 2740 local municipalities. Our results point to a beneficial effect of income inequality on school performance for children with middle educated parents. In contrast, children with poorly educated parents as well as children with highly educated parents perform worse in more unequal communities. However, the popular idea that societies with a more equal income distribution inevitably enhance the upward mobility of disadvantaged children cannot be confirmed.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CREMA Working Paper ; No. 2011-03

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Analysis of Education ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: General ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Distribution: General ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
• Subject: inequality ; intergenerational transmission ; mobility ; educational attainment ; income distribution ; human capital

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bauer, Philipp C. ; Schaltegger, Christoph A.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)
• (where): Basel
• (when): 2011

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/214487