Schooling Quality in a Cross-Section of Countries.

This paper presents a newly constructed panel data-set that includes output and input measures of schooling quality for a broad number of countries. Based on this data-set, we investigate the determinants of educational quality. The results show that family inputs and school resources are closely related to school outcomes, as measured by internationally comparable test scores, repetition rates and dropout rates. Family characteristics, such as income and education of parents, have strong relations with student performance. The findings also suggest that more school resources--especially smaller class sizes, but probably also higher teacher salaries and greater school length--enhance educational outcomes. Copyright 2001 by The London School of Economics and Political Science