Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve “equality of opportunity”, i.e. to guarantee all pupils independent of parental background equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that...

The NZ labour market is among the most flexible in the OECD, and outcomes for its young people have been among the best. However, labour-market opportunities are heavily determined by initial education, where New Zealand’s system is also successful and innovative in many ways. Average PISA...

Height is positively associated with educational attainment. We investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that taller children are more likely to enroll in Gymnasium, the most academic secondary school track, and that primary school...

Students face four decision margins: (a) How many years to spend in school, (b) What to study, (c) How much effort to devote to learning per year and (d) Whether to disrupt or assist the learning of classmates. The thousands of studies that have applied human capital theory to the first two...

In this paper we suggest a simple decomposition of the correlation coefficient of education to account for the different intergenerational mobility of subgroups of the population, which is of key importance from a policy perspective.

Employment fosters equity and economic inclusiveness because those out of work face the highest risk of poverty, and it generates the tax receipts on which the social safety net depends. Further enhancing education and life-long learning would lower hurdles to employment, which are high for the...

Summary Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve “equality of opportunity”, i.e. to guarantee all pupils independent of parental background equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields...