{"title":"Peer creativity and academic achievement","authors":"Max van Lent","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102649","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102649","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the relationship between the creative abilities of study peers and academic achievement. We conduct a novel large scale field experiment at university, where students are randomized into work groups based on their score on a creativity test prior to university entry. We show that the creative abilities of peers matter for a student’s academic achievement. A one standard deviation higher creativity peer group improves study performance by 6.2 to 7.6 percentage points. Further analysis suggests that students exposed to creative peers become more creative, but do not adjust their overall study effort. This is in line with the idea that creative approaches and questions from peers help students master the study material better. Overall, our study highlights the importance of peer effects of creative students in shaping academic outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102649"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143777649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hai-Anh H. Dang , Minh N.N. Do , Cuong Viet Nguyen
{"title":"The impacts of climate change and air pollution on children’s education outcomes: Evidence from Vietnam","authors":"Hai-Anh H. Dang , Minh N.N. Do , Cuong Viet Nguyen","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102656","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102656","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Very few studies have examined the impacts of both climate change and air pollution on student education outcomes, particularly in a developing country setting. Analyzing a rich database consisting of household and school surveys, test scores, and temperature and air pollution data over the past decade for Viet Nam, we find that a 1 µg/m<sup>3</sup> increase in PM2.5 concentration in the month preceding exams leads to 0.015 and 0.010 standard deviation decreases in math and reading scores, respectively. We also find some indicative evidence of stronger impacts of air pollution for younger, primary school students who reside in urban areas and in districts with higher temperatures. While we find some mixed effects of temperature, we do not find significant effects on students' test scores for temperature extremes and air pollution over the past 12 months. Our findings offer policy-relevant inputs for the country’s ongoing efforts to fight air pollution.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"106 ","pages":"Article 102656"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143905892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When do ordinal ability rank effects emerge? Evidence from the timing of school closures","authors":"Marco Bertoni, Saeideh Parkam","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102633","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102633","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We leverage the timing of pandemic-induced school closures to learn about the emergence of ordinal rank effects in education. Using administrative data from Italian middle schools for four cohorts of students, our study reveals that disrupting peer interactions during the first year of middle school – when students are still unfamiliar with one another – substantially diminishes the impact of ordinal rank on test scores. Instead, later interruptions to peer interactions do not significantly affect the strength of these interpersonal comparisons.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102633"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143133971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Average and heterogeneous effects of political party on state education finance and outcomes: Regression discontinuity evidence across U.S. election cycles","authors":"Mark J. Chin , Lena Shi","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102636","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102636","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the U.S., state politicians directly influence legislation and budget decisions that can substantially affect public education spending and students. (When) does the political party of elected officials matter for these outcomes? We introduce a novel multi-dimensional regression discontinuity design to analyze close legislative elections from 1987 to 2019 and find that the impact of Democratic control of state government depends on election timing. Democratic state houses appropriate fewer dollars to K-12 education following a presidential election year, but significantly more during off-cycle elections. These patterns are magnified—for both K-12 and higher education—when Democrats control both legislative chambers. Increases in appropriations coincide with increased current expenditures in K-12 and higher high school diploma rates. Our results highlight the importance of considering how federal political contexts and control over multiple government branches influence the effects of partisanship on states’ education finance and outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102636"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143386417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Affirmative action, college access and major choice: Redistribution with strategic behavior","authors":"Ana Paula Melo","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102622","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102622","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I estimate the redistributive and behavioral effects of a race-neutral affirmative action policy targeting low-income applicants at a flagship university in Brazil. I find that the policy redistributed college seats toward applicants from low socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented racial groups, increasing their representation in selective majors. This diversity gain came with an expected decrease in the average achievement of the incoming cohort but retained admissions for candidates in the upper half of the statewide achievement distribution. Applicants also responded strategically to the policy by adjusting their application choices, resulting in a reduction of the socioeconomic gap in applications to selective majors by 21 percent of the unconditional gap and 36 percent when comparing applicants with similar academic backgrounds and demographic characteristics. However, while some applicants successfully updated their choices, others aimed too high and missed their chance of admission—an especially costly outcome for the targeted group.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102622"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143421605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hashibul Hassan , Asad Islam , Imrul Kayes , Liang Choon Wang
{"title":"Building education resilience through parenting style and out-of-school learning: Field experimental evidence from rural Bangladesh","authors":"Hashibul Hassan , Asad Islam , Imrul Kayes , Liang Choon Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102623","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102623","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study evaluates the impacts of two mobile-phone-based distance education interventions, involving direct parental engagement, on parenting styles and children's cognitive development. Drawing from two randomised controlled trials conducted in rural Bangladesh during the Covid-19 pandemic, we examine two interventions: 1) Telementoring, where volunteers mentored mothers and tutored children over the phone; and 2) IVR Audio-lessons, where mothers accessed pre-recorded audio lessons for their children via a toll-free number. The Telementoring program significantly increased mothers’ authoritative parenting scores by 0.53 SD, while the IVR Audio-lesson program led to a 0.24 SD increase. Mediation analyses suggest that changes in parenting style accounted for 0.03 SD and 0.04 SD increase in children's test scores, or mediated 4 % and 8 % of the total intervention effect on children's test scores for Telementoring and IVR Audio-lessons, respectively. The findings underscore the potential of scalable and cost-effective phone-based interventions to enhance parental roles and foster children's human capital development in low-resource settings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102623"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143133513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public health insurance and special education enrollment","authors":"Wendy Stock , Gunnar Schultz","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102634","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102634","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Children with disabilities face substantial hurdles in obtaining education. Special education (SE) can potentially improve outcomes for these children, but identifying and providing services to eligible students is problematic, particularly for low-income children and children with “invisible” or “malleable” disabilities like dyslexia, anxiety, or ADHD. At the same time, there is no consensus that SE enrollment is uniformly positive. There are concerns about stigma, bias in the process, and the impact of expanding SE budgets on general education funding. Exploiting variation in expansions to Medicaid eligibility by state, year, and age, we find that increases in Medicaid eligibility generated increased average rates of SE enrollment, with effects concentrated among elementary school children, those with malleable disabilities, and those for whom Medicaid expansions were on the intensive margin (gaining additional years of Medicaid eligibility) rather than in the extensive margin (gaining initial eligibility for Medicaid). At the same time, however, children who had more early childhood Medicaid eligibility before they started elementary school were less likely to be enrolled in SE than their peers, implying that gaining access to Medicaid in early childhood generated access to screening and treatment that reduced the need for SE support in elementary school. Because federal law requires that Medicaid be the primary payer to schools that provide SE services, the estimates suggest that by dramatically reducing SE enrollment among those with more early childhood Medicaid eligibility and by modestly expanding SE enrollment on the intensive margin, Medicaid expansions likely mitigated the impacts of SE spending on general education budgets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102634"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143348496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bridging the gender gap: Women’s education and political representation","authors":"Luna Bellani , Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102605","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102605","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Gender disparity is present in many aspects of life, especially in politics. This paper provides new evidence on the impact of women’s education on political representation focusing on several European countries. We combine multi-country data from the Gender Statistics Database of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and from the European Social Survey (ESS). Using an IV strategy, we find that increased female education significantly increases the percentage of women elected to regional parliaments. We then explore possible channels at the individual level and find that education increases women’s interest in politics and induces more egalitarian views about gender roles in society among women, although it fails to do so among men.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"104 ","pages":"Article 102605"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143140950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"De-tracking at the margin: How alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment","authors":"Sönke Hendrik Matthewes , Camilla Borgna","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102608","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102608","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper estimates how marginal increases in the flexibility of between-school tracking affect student attainment by exploiting the addition of non-selective ‘comprehensive schools’ and hybrid ‘vocational high schools’ to Germany’s tracked school system. These schools opened up alternative pathways to the university-entrance certificate, which traditionally could only be obtained at academic-track schools. We use administrative records to compile a county-level panel of school supply and attainment for 13 cohorts between 1995 and 2007. Cross-sectionally, the supplies of all three school types awarding the university-entrance certificate correlate positively with its attainment. However, for academic-track and comprehensive schools this association is not robust to the inclusion of regional controls, suggesting that it reflects regional differences in educational demand rather than supply-side effects. For vocational high schools, in contrast, we find robust evidence for positive attainment effects not only in cross-sectional and two-way fixed-effects panel regressions, but also in an event-study design that exploits the quasi-random timing of new school openings. Likely reasons for their success are that they lower the (perceived) costs of educational upgrading for late-bloomers, and their hybrid curriculum, which may retain students in general schooling who would otherwise enter vocational training.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"104 ","pages":"Article 102608"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143140943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The age gradient in the effects of poverty alleviation program on schooling. Evidence from the Vietnam hunger eradication and poverty reduction program","authors":"Marco Bertoni , Quynh Huynh , Lorenzo Rocco","doi":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102616","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102616","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper estimates the effect of the Vietnam Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) program on school enrollment and shows how it changes by age at first treatment. Using longitudinal data that span over 15 years and a difference-in-differences research design, we find that early treatment (age 8) increases enrollment by 9.9 percentage points. In contrast, the enrollment of children receiving treatment at later ages (age 12 and 15) is either unaffected or even reduced in rural areas, where it is paralleled by an increase in labor market participation. These divergent results by age and area of residence depend on two components: first, the effect of subsidizing education declines with the age of first treatment; second, starting from age 15, HEPR beneficiaries residing in rural areas are entitled with free access to the Vocational Training Program, which favors a prompt transition to the labor market.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48261,"journal":{"name":"Economics of Education Review","volume":"104 ","pages":"Article 102616"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143140951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}