Educational Opportunities of Children in Poverty

In this paper, I use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to investigate whether and how a German youth' s choice of secondary school (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium) varies with the timing and duration of poverty experienced in childhood. To investigate what role the timing of poverty plays, I examine the correlation between educational choices and the poverty status of each child' s household in the three years preceding the educational decision to be analysed. Not surprisingly, persistently poor youth are less likely to choose higher educational trajectories.