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- Grätz, Michael
(author)
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Does Increasing the Minimum School-Leaving Age Affect the Intergenerational Transmission of Education? Evidence from Four European Countries
- 2021
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In: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 38:4, s. 543-559
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Reforms in the minimum school-leaving age are candidates for policies that affect the intergenerational transmission of education. I propose that the societal contexts in which these reforms occur may moderate their effects on educational mobility. To test this hypothesis, I estimate the cross-country variation in the effects of increases in the minimum school-leaving age on educational mobility in four European countries. I employ a regression discontinuity design and data from the European Social Survey and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe on Austria, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. The findings provide no evidence to the hypothesis that the reforms in the minimum school-leaving age changed the association between the education of parents and the education of their children in any of the four countries. These findings are robust to measuring educational attainment in a multitude of ways, and they do not vary between men and women. The results are at odds with rational choice theories that expect reforms in the minimum school-leaving age to increase educational mobility.
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| 2. |
- Grätz, Michael
(author)
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Does Regime Change Affect Intergenerational Mobility? Evidence from German Reunification
- 2021
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In: European Sociological Review. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0266-7215 .- 1468-2672. ; 37:3, s. 465-481
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study uses the natural experiment of German reunification and a difference-in-differences approach to test whether the political and economic transition in East Germany in 1990 affected intergenerational occupational and educational mobility. Results obtained using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study show that German reunification did neither strongly affect occupational nor educational mobility. These findings are robust to operationalizing social origin in various ways. Admittedly, reunification may have had small or long-term effects on occupational and educational mobility that cannot be uncovered with the data and research design employed in this study. However, the findings rule out that there were large, short- or medium-term effects of German reunification on intergenerational mobility. These findings are at odds with theories that argue that institutional change has strong, immediate causal effects on intergenerational mobility.
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| 3. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(author)
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Large loss in studying time during the closure of schools in Switzerland in 2020
- 2021
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In: Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. - : Elsevier BV. - 0276-5624 .- 1878-5654. ; 71
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The majority of European, as well as many other, countries responded to the outbreak of the new coronavirus with a closure of schools and universities. The expectation of policy makers was that schools and universities would continue to provide lessons online and that students would engage in home learning. How much home learning has there been? We use nationally representative, longitudinal data on 14- to 25-year-old Swiss students to analyze the effects of school closures on studying time. Our results show that students reduced, on average, their studying time from 35 to 23 hours per week. This reduction was stronger for students in secondary school age than for students older than 18. Contrary to our expectations, these reductions in studying time did not vary between male and female students. In addition, children from families with highly educated parents reduced their studying time in absolute terms more than children from families with low educated parents. In relative terms, reductions in children’s studying time did not vary by parental education. We also found some variation in the reduction in studying time across the three linguistic regions in Switzerland. Taken together, our findings show that studying time was considerably reduced during the closure of schools. We therefore conclude by suggesting political measures that can compensate for the loss in studying time a generation of Swiss students experienced between March and July 2020.
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| 4. |
- Grätz, Michael, et al.
(author)
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Sibling Similarity in Education Across and Within Societies
- 2021
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In: Demography. - : Duke University Press. - 0070-3370 .- 1533-7790. ; 58:3, s. 1011-1037
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The extent to which siblings resemble each other measures the omnibus impact of family background on life chances. We study sibling similarity in cognitive skills, school grades, and educational attainment in Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compare sibling similarity by parental education and occupation within these societies. The comparison of sibling correlations across and within societies allows us to characterize the omnibus impact of family background on education across social landscapes. Across countries, we find larger population-level differences in sibling similarity in educational attainment than in cognitive skills and school grades. In general, sibling similarity in education varies less across countries than sibling similarity in earnings. Compared with Scandinavian countries, the United States shows more sibling similarity in cognitive skills and educational attainment but less sibling similarity in school grades. We find that socioeconomic differences in sibling similarity vary across parental resources, countries, and measures of educational success. Sweden and the United States show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a highly educated father, and Finland and Norway show greater sibling similarity in educational attainment in families with a low-educated father. We discuss the implications of our results for theories about the impact of institutions and income inequality on educational inequality and the mechanisms that underlie such inequality.
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