This paper explores the phenomenon referred to as test score inflation, which occurs when achievement gains on quot;high-stakesquot; exams outpace improvements on quot;low-stakesquot; tests. The first part of the paper documents the extent to which student performance trends on state assessments...

Many theories of economic growth stress the role of human capital in the form of education, but empirical studies have been hampered by inadequate data. We describe a data set on educational attainment that we have constructed for 129 countries over five-year periods from 1960-1985. We use...

We examine intergenerational mobility (IM) in educational attainment in Africa since independence using census data. First, we map IM across 27 countries and more than 2,800 regions, documenting wide cross-country and especially within-country heterogeneity. Inertia looms large as differences in...

It is widely documented that places with higher levels of income inequality have lower rates of social mobility. But it is an open question as to whether this reflects a causal relationship. We propose that one channel by which higher rates of income inequality might lead to lower rates of...

Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates increased by 4.4%. We present...

One of the most wide-ranging reforms in public education in the last decade has been the reorganization of large comprehensive high schools into small schools with roughly 100 students per grade. We use assignment lotteries embedded in New York City's high school match to estimate the effects of...

In this paper, we investigate the association between weight and adolescent's educational attainment, as measured by highest grade attended, highest grade completed, and drop out status. Data for the study came from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which...

Analyses of college attainment typically focus on factors affecting enrollment demand, including the financial attractiveness of a college education and the availability of financial aid, while implicitly assuming that resources available per student on the supply side of the market are...

Education is strongly related to participation in the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program. To explore this relationship, we describe the correlation between education and DI participation, and then explore how four factors related to education – health, wealth, occupation, and...

Although the measurement of intergenerational income mobility has seen a rapid increase in attention and policy discussions, similar examinations of educational mobility in the U.S. are lacking. This paper begins to fill this gap by documenting differences in educational mobility across time...