Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Causes and Consequences of Inequality in Academic Achievement: Comparisons Across Countries, Cohorts, and the Life-Course

(Education)

This panel brings together new international evidence on inequality in academic achievement and the achievement gap between children from low- and high-socioeconomic status families. Taken together, the four studies reported in this panel examine achievement inequality in Anglophone, European, and other OECD-member countries as well as over 50 less-developed countries. Together, the studies also cover each critical stage of education: early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; and they cover birth cohorts from 1950 to 2000. The results reveal dramatic variation across countries in the level of inequality in achievement, inequality that appears to be increasing in more recent birth cohorts, to grow as children progress through school, and to result in greater earnings inequality in adulthood. Collectively, these results point to the importance of early intervention to reduce skills gaps during childhood and adolescence. Finally, these studies shed light on which countries have lower and/or declining inequality in achievement and which educational and social policies are associated with a more equitable distribution of skills. The first study examines gaps in school readiness and achievement between children from low- and high-income families using longitudinal data on children from school entry until the end of primary school, born in the 1990s and early 2000s in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The authors find that readiness gaps are largest in the US and that these gaps grow as children move through school. The second study examines achievement gaps between students from low- and high-socioeconomic status families (defined by parental education, occupation, and number of household books) using repeated cross-sectional data on primary and secondary school students born between 1950 and 2000 in 106 countries. The author finds that achievement gaps have increased in most countries, particularly between the middle and the bottom of the SES distribution. The third study calculates achievement gaps based on household income using cross-sectional data on primary and secondary school students born in the 1990s in 20 OECD-member countries. The authors find that the US income achievement gap is relatively large and that smaller gaps are associated with lower levels of educational differentiation, higher levels of curricular standardization, and lower levels of poverty and inequality. The fourth study examines dispersion in achievement using data matched to form synthetic cohorts born between the 1950s and 1980s in 20 European countries, observed between ages 14 and 59. The authors find evidence for an independent effect of greater childhood achievement inequality on adult earnings inequality (net of inequality in educational attainment) and evidence for reductions in educational dispersions after some educational policy reforms (e.g. public preschool, standardized tests).