Socio-economic status and worklessness: educational investments and expectations

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Socio-economic status and worklessness: educational investments and expectations

Häs, Silvan; (2022) Socio-economic status and worklessness: educational investments and expectations. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

The link between socio-economic status (SES) and educational outcomes is well established. In this thesis, I improve understanding of different types of educational investment and mechanisms through which dimensions of SES affect young people’s education. First, I use data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to research educational investments in 15-year-olds: how do parents in workless households invest their resources in their children’s education? Using matching methods comparing children from workless households to those from otherwise similar working households, I find that workless parents invest less money but more time in their child’s education, although I find no difference in paying for commercial tutoring. Second, using longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), I examine the relationship between household worklessness and educational investments at different ages. Using instrumental variables and fixed effects approaches to reduce bias, I find that workless parents are less likely to pay for childcare (age 1–3) but are equally likely as working parents to pay for tutoring (11–14). While workless parents read to their child (3-7) more frequently, it is unclear whether this difference is causal. I find no link between household worklessness and parents helping their child with reading, writing, or maths (5–7). Contrasting my results from the multinational PISA data, I find no difference in parental homework help for British youths (11–14). Finally, I look at SES more generally and how it relates to 17-year-olds’ expectations about going to university. I explore the role of risk attitudes and time preferences in forming these expectations. I analyse MCS data using regression analysis. Controlling for teenagers’ and households’ background characteristics over more than 10 years, I find that SES and patience are positively associated with educational expectations, but find no link between risk attitudes and educational expectations.

Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification:	Ph.D
Title:	Socio-economic status and worklessness: educational investments and expectations
Event:	UCL
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language:	English
Additional information:	Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Keywords:	economics of education, workless, economic preferences, educational expectations, educational investments, risk aversion, patience
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10141630