Available online xxx JEL classification: I21 J12 C21
Keywords:Family structure Academic achievement Propensity score matching School ownership a b s t r a c t Several sociodemographic phenomena have changed family organization in Spain over the last few decades, where less structured forms than the traditional nuclear family have gained in importance. In view of the importance of children's and adolescents' education, we aim to identify the effect of non-nuclear family membership on academic outcomes of Spanish children in fourth-year primary education and adolescents in second-year secondary education. To do this, we use a propensity score matching approach to compare the impact of family structure on student performance, measured through grade retention and mathematics scores, with the results of standard econometric models. The results show that non-nuclear family membership has a significant negative impact on student grade retention with more significant differences among older students. In addition, this family structure is only found to have a consistently negative effect on mathematics scores for secondary education students.
Although the presence of the endogeneity is frequently observed in economic production processes, it tends to be overlooked when practitioners apply data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this paper we deal with this issue in two ways. First, we provide a simple statistical heuristic procedure that enables practitioners to identify the presence of endogeneity in an empirical application. Second, we propose the use of an instrumental input DEA (II-DEA) as a potential tool to address this problem and thus improve DEA estimations. A Monte Carlo experiment confirms that the proposed II-DEA approach outperforms standard DEA in finite samples under the presence of high positive endogeneity. To illustrate our theoretical findings, we perform an empirical application on the education sector.
The aim of this research is to explore the existence of inefficient behaviors in public high schools in Uruguay and identify its potential drivers. To do so, we perform a two-stage model using PISA 2009 and 2012 databases. In the first stage, we use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate efficiency scores, which are then regressed on school and student contextual variables. This second stage is carried out using four alternative models: a conventional censored regression and three different regression models based on the use of bootstrapping recently proposed in the literature. Our results show that educational efficiency in Uruguayan high schools significantly dropped in nine percentage points between 2009 and 2012. In terms of educational policy recommendations, in order to reduce the inefficiencies in the evaluated public schools in Uruguay, the focus should be put on reducing grade-retention levels and promoting teaching-learning techniques that enhance student's mathematics study skills and assessing students continuously through test and homework throughout the academic year. In this vein, our findings also show positive effects on public schools' efficiency of providing the responsibility in the distribution of the school budget to school principals.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.