The Effect of Family Background on Student Effort

Kuehn, Zoe and Landeras, Pedro (2012): The Effect of Family Background on Student Effort.

Abstract

While students from more advantageous family backgrounds tend to perform better, it is not clear that they exert more effort compared to those from less advantageous family backgrounds. We build a model of students, schools, and employers to study the interaction of family background and effort exerted by the student in the education process. Academic qualifications, which entail an income premium in the labor market, are noisily determined by effort and the student's ability to benefit from education, which in turn depends on her family background and innate talent. In a situation where schools set the optimal passing standard, two factors turn out to be key in determining the relationship between effort and family background: (i) the student's risk aversion and (ii) the degree with which family background alters the student's marginal productivity of effort. We show that when the degree of risk aversion is relatively low (high) compared to the sensitivity of the marginal productivity of the student's effort with respect to her family background, the relation between effort and family background is positive (negative) and students from more advantageous family backgrounds exert more (less) effort. Considering Spanish data and controlling for school fixed effects, we find that an improvement in parental education from not having completed compulsory education to holding a university degree is associated to around 15% more effort by the student(approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes of additional weekly homework). We also find empirical evidence consistent with our assumption that students' marginal productivity of effort varies with family background.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: student effort, family background, risk aversion, educational standards
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I21 - Analysis of Education; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I28 - Government Policy

References

Anghel, Brindusa and Antonio Cabrales(2010): "The Determination of Success in Primary Education in Spain," FEDEA, Documento de Trabajo 2010-20.

Belzil, Christian and Jörgen Hansen(2004): "Earnings Dispersion, Risk Aversion and Education," Research in Labor Economics, 23, pp. 335-358.

Belzil, Christian and Marco Leonardi(2007): "Can Risk Aversion Explain Schooling Attainments. Evidence from Italy," Labour Economics, 14(6), pp. 957-970.

Blanden, Jo and Paul Gregg(2004): "Family Income and Educational Attainment: A Review of Approaches and Evidence for Britain," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 20(2), pp. 245-263.

Bonesrønning, Hans(2003): "Class Size Effects on Student Achievement in Norway: Patterns and Explanations," Southern Economic Journal, 69(4), pp. 952-965.

Bonesrønning, Hans(2004): "The Determinants of Parental Effort in Education Production: Do Parents Respond to Changes in Class Size?," Economics of Education Review, 23(1), pp. 1-9.

Brodaty, Thomas; Gary-Bobo, Robert and Ana Prieto(2006): "Risk Aversion, Expected Earnings and Opportunity Costs: a Structural Econometric Model of Human Capital Investment," CEPR Discussion Paper No. 5694.

Cooley, Jane(2010): "Desegregation and the Achievement Gap: Do Diverse Peers Help?," Department of Economics, Duke University.

Correa, Hector and Gene W. Gruver(1987): "Teacher-Student Interaction: A Game Theoretic Extension of the Economic Theory of Education," Mathematical Social Sciences, 13(1), pp. 19-47.

De Fraja, Gianni(2002): "The Design of Optimal Education Policies," Review of Economic Studies, 69(2), pp. 437-466.

De Fraja, Gianni(2005): "Reverse Discrimination and Efficiency in Education," International Economic Review, 46(3), pp. 1009-1031.

De Fraja, Gianni and Pedro Landeras(2006): "Could Do Better: The Effectiveness of Incentives and Competition in Schools," Journal of Public Economics, 90(1-2), pp. 189-213.

De Fraja, Gianni; Oliveira, Tania and Luis Zanchi (2010): "Must Try Harder. Evaluating the Role of Effort on Examination Results," Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(3), pp. 577-597.

Ermisch, John and Marco Francesconi(2001): "Family Matters: Impacts of Family Background on Educational Attainments," Economica, 68(270), pp. 137-156.

Fan, Xitao and Michael Chen(2001): "Parental Involvement and Students' Academic Achievement: a Meta-Analysis," Educational Psychology Review, 13(1), pp. 1-22.

Feinstein, Leon and James Symons(1999): "Attainment in Secondary School," Oxford Economic Papers, 51(2), pp. 300-321.

Galindo-Rueda, Fernando and Anna Vignoles(2003): "Class Ridden or Meritocratic? An Economic Analysis of Recent Changes in Britain," CEE Discussion Papers 0032, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.

Haveman, Robert and Barbara Wolfe(1995): "The Determinants of Children's Attainments: a Review of Methods and Findings," Journal of Economic Literature, 33(4), pp. 1829-1878.

Landeras, Pedro(2009): "Student Effort: Standards vs. Tournaments," Applied Economics Letters, 16, pp. 965-969.

Lin, Chung-Cheng and Ching-Ching Lai(1996): "Why Parents and Teachers May Prefer Punishment to Encouragement for Child Education?," Southern Economic Journal, 63(1), pp. 244-247.

Nielsen, Helena Skyt and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen(2006): "The Impact of Labor Income Risk on Educational Choices: Estimates and Implied Risk Aversion," Unpublished Manuscript, Department of Economics, University of Aarhus.

Psacharopoulos George and Richard Layard(1979): "Human Capital and Earnings: British Evidence and a Critique," The Review of Economic Studies, 46(3), pp. 485-503.

Smith, Jeremy and Robin Naylor(2001a): "Dropping out of University: A Statistical Analysis of the Probability of Withdrawal for UK University Students," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 164, pp. 389-405.

Smith, Jeremy and Robin Naylor(2001b): "Determinants of degree performance in UK universities: a statistical analysis of the 1993 student cohort," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 63(1), pp. 29-60.

Stinebrickner, Ralph and Toodd R. Stinebrickner(2008): "The Causal Effect of Studying on Academic Performance," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 8/1 (Frontiers), pp. 1-54.