Education Policy and Equality of Opportunity

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6435.2008.00402.x Byline: Gabriela Schutz (1), Heinrich W. Ursprung (2), Ludger Wo[sz]mann (3) Abstract: SUMMARY We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. Using cross-country variation in education policies and its interaction with family background at the student level, we then estimate how equality is related to organizational features of the education system. We find that equality of opportunity is positively related to late tracking into different school types and to longer pre-school education. Pre-school enrollment has an inverted U-shaped relationship with equality. Equality is negatively related to private school financing, but positively to private provision. Author Affiliation: (1)Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Poschingerstr. 5, 81679 Munich, Germany (2)Department of Economics, University of Konstanz and CESifo, Box D-138, 78457 Konstanz, Germany (3)University of Munich, Ifo Institute for Economic Research, CESifo and IZA, Poschingerstr. 5, 81679 Munich, Germany