Education and Equal Opportunities

Education & Equal Opportunities

The world is changing, and it is not changing back. The best way to cope, for young people and everyone else (including policymakers), is a constantly evolving, high-quality education system that responds to the needs of the times and of the respective economies. Education is also key for promoting equal opportunities and fostering social mobility and social cohesion. This section of EconPol explores the relationship between education and socio-economic outcomes, proposing solutions to the barriers that hinder equitable access to education, such as socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and geographical location, with the goal of helping to devise policies and initiatives aimed at reducing disparities and promoting inclusive systems.

Related articles

Patience and the North-South Divide in Student Achievement in Italy and the United States

BIG-DATA-BASED ECONOMIC INSIGHTS

Eric A. Hanushek, Lavinia Kinne, Pietro Sancassani and Ludger Woessmann

This article shows how Facebook interests can be used to construct subnational measures of patience (“the relative valuation of present versus future payoffs”). Differences in patience are closely related to regional student performance in Italy and the United States. The results provide new perspectives on long-standing differences between the countries.

... Details

A World Unprepared: Missing Skills for Development

ECONOMIC POLICY AND ITS IMPACT

Sarah Gust, Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann

How far away is the world from ensuring that every child obtains at least basic skills? And what would it mean for world development to reach the goal of global universal basic skills? This article addresses these two intertwined questions in a new study. The authors draw on the individual-level test data from available international and regional student assessments to develop world estimates of the share of children not achieving basic skills in each country and then show the economic costs of these deficits.

... Details

Inequality Trends in the Context of Changes in Labor Market Outcomes, Composition and Redistribution in Germany

INSTITUTIONS ACROSS THE WORLD

Maximilian Blömer, Elena Herold, Max Lay, Andreas Peichl, Ann-Christin Rathje, Paul Schüle and Anne Steuernagel

With ongoing demographic and economic changes, documenting the distribution of economic resources within a society is a recurring task for applied economic research that can never be considered complete. In Germany, several studies have investigated trends in earnings and income inequality in the past few years. However, a recent and comprehensive account of inequality in Germany that also considers dimensions other than earnings and income inequality is currently not available. This article documents the development of inequalities in Germany over the years from 1983 to 2020.

... Details

Mentoring Improves the School-to-work Transition of Disadvantaged Adolescents

ECONOMIC POLICY AND ITS IMPACT

Sven Resnjanskij, Jens Ruhose, Katharina Wedel, Simon Wiederhold and Ludger Woessmann

This article evaluates the effectiveness of one of the largest mentoring programs for disadvantaged adolescents in Germany. The aim of the program “Rock Your Life!” is the successful transition of adolescents from lower secondary school to an apprenticeship or upper secondary school. Mentoring programs can strongly improve the transition from school to work for disadvantaged adolescents. The results show that substituting a lack of family support with other adults can help disadvantaged children in adolescence.

... Details

Apprenticeship Skills Pay Off on the Labor Market

ECONOMIC POLICY AND ITS IMPACT

Christina Langer, Jakob Peiffer and Simon Wiederhold

Workers’ skills are essential to their success on the labor market. However, the empirical evidence on the economic impact of higher skills is still limited due to how skills are measured. In this article, the authors develop novel measures of workers’ skills that are comprehensive, highly detailed, and directly relevant to the labor market. To this end, they leverage the characteristics of the German apprenticeship system, which offers three main advantages for measuring skills and analyzing their labor market potential.

... Details