Spillover effects of maternal education in elementary classroom: evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the spillover effects of maternal education in elementary classrooms in the context of Vietnam. Drawing from the sample of students who are randomly assigned to classrooms, we find that exposure to classmates whose mothers are well-educated positively influences student achievement. The heterogeneity analyses reveal that the magnitude of the effects tends to be larger for students from advantaged backgrounds. Exploring the mechanisms, we find that higher academic aspiration and motivation as well as an improved learning environment are potential pathways to the favorable impacts of peers’ maternal education.KEYWORDS: Peer effectmaternal educationlearningstudent achievement Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Changes in teachers’ and mothers’ behavior can also be potential pathways (Wang Citation2021; Chung and Zou Citation2023). These are mentioned in Section 5.5 but unfortunately the lack of data makes it impossible for us to empirically test these pathways.2 School data were only collected for the younger cohort3 Vietnam is categorized into eight socioeconomic regions: North-West, North-East, Red River Delta, North Central Coast, South Central Coast, South-East, Central Highlands, and Mekong River Delta. Furthermore, all major urban centers (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hai Phong, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau) are regarded as a new region – the Cities region (Nguyen Citation2008). Five regions were selected for the YLP study, based on the following criteria: (i) regions in the North, Central and South, (ii) regions consisting of urban, rural, and mountainous areas, (iii) regions having a larger (than the national average) poor population, and (iv) regions reflecting some unique factors of the country, such as natural disaster and war consequences. The Young Lives team then selected one province from each region: Lao Cai (North-East region), Hung Yen (Red River Delta), Da Nang (Cities), Phu Yen (South Central Coast), and Ben Tre (Mekong River Delta).4 In the full sample that includes students who are randomly assigned to classrooms and students who are not randomly assigned to classrooms, there are 3,284 students and 176 classrooms (Table 1, Columns 4-6).5 On average, a student in our sample misses around 1.15 days of class during the academic year while the maximum of absent days each student has is 9 days. Approximately 15% of students have the number of absences greater than the class average.