Publications des chercheurs de PSE

Socially disadvantaged students are less likely to aspire to the top educational pathways than their advantaged classmates who have the same test scores. We identify two behavioural biases that explain most of this gap: socially disadvantaged students are less aware of the top educational pathways and underestimate their academic ability relative to their advantaged peers. We also find that lower educational aspirations at a point in time are associated with poorer school outcomes later on, after controlling for many important factors. Debiasing aspirations through information campaigns and self-esteem building programmes could thus help reduce social inequality in educational attainment.

Cet article a été rédigé pour la conférence internationale intitulée "Russie en Europe". Il est le deuxième volet de nos analyses de l'éducation en Russie. Le premier volet a été réservé à l'examen de co-évolution de l'éducation et de l'économie et à l'information sur les changements dans le système éducatif depuis la libéralisation de l'économie. Ici nous nous intéressons aux relations entre l'évolution de la psychologie sociale russe et les transformations des modes d'éduquer en Russie. La psychologie sociale est une science née au siècle dernier et aussi un état de la conscience sociale d'un peuple, forgée historiquement sur la base les artefacts culturels propres. Nous montrons que les ruptures dans la consciences sociale, liées aux chocs idéologiques et économiques, concernent l'éducation et rehaussent son rôle dans les périodes historiques de sortie de crises.

This paper tests whether we observe sex-discrimination in teachers' grades, and whether such biases affect pupils' achievement during the school year. I use a unique dataset containing standardized tests, teachers' attributed grades, and pupil's behavior, all three at different periods in time. Based on double-differences, the identification of the gender bias in teachers' grades suggests that (i) girls benefit from a substantive positive discrimination in math but not in French, (ii) girls' better behavior than boys, and their initial lower achievement in math do not explain much of this gender bias. Then, I use the heterogeneity in teachers' discriminatory behavior to show that classes in which teachers present a high degree of discrimination in favor of girls at the beginning of the year are also classes in which girls tend to progress more over the school year compared to boys.

This paper addresses the question of intergenerational schooling mobility in Senegal. We use an original survey conducted in 2003 that provides instruments to deal with the endogeneity of parent's education. In Senegal, school supply has been increasing a lot over the last decades, individuals who are now adults had different exposure to the schooling system, depending on where they lived when they were young and on their birth cohort. Hence, a first set of instruments describes the infrastructures available in the environment in which parents lived when they were 10 years old. Moreover, variation in education demand for a child is also driven by his/her position among his/her siblings, since older children tend to be less educated in West Africa. Being the first born is random but implies different educational outcomes than other birth ranks. Hence, the second set of instruments describes whether the parents were the first born among their same sex siblings. The estimated effect of father's education is more than double when its endogeneity is accounted for. Unexpectedly, mother's education comes out as a lesser determinant. We then focus on the understanding of the channels through which parental education affects children's schooling. We present the results pointing at the importance of the direct impact of parental education relative to the effect passing through wealth or household activity choices.

On considère ici la taxation redistributive parmi les agents avec et sans capital humain lorsque l'éducation est endogène et lorsque les agents diffèrent par leur perception sur leur propre productivité. Ceux qui pensent être peu productifs préfèrent plus de redistribution du fait des transferts plus élevés qu'ils reçoivent. Ceux qui pensent être plus productifs peuvent préférer plus de redistribution car elle désincite les autres à s'éduquer et augmente ainsi la quasi rente de son capital humain. Il est surprenant que cet effet plutôt indirect puisse sur-compenser les agents les plus productifs pour la perte de revenu dérivée d'une fiscalité plus élevée, à tel point qu'ils préfèrent payer plus d'impôts que les peu productifs. Les résultats sont compatibles avec l'évidence empirique sur la quantité de redistribution désirée parmi les jeunes.

We show how differences in aggregate human development outcomes over time and space can be additively decomposed into a pure mean income (growth) component, a component attributed to differences in the distribution of income, and components attributed to 'non-income' factors and differences in the model linking outcomes to income and non-income characteristics. The income effect at the micro level is modelled non-parametrically, so as to flexibly reflect potentially complex distributional changes. Our proposed method is illustrated using data for Morocco and Vietnam, and the results offer some surprising insights into the observed aggregate gains in schooling attainments.

We look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Cote d'Ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment, labor, height stature and morbidity. Using pre-crisis (1985-88) and post-crisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the cocoa shock on child outcomes, whereby we compare children of cocoa-producing households and children of other farmers living in the same district or the same village. This causal effect is shown to be rather strong for the four child outcomes we examine. Hence human capital investments are definitely procyclical in this context. We also argue that the difference-in-difference variations can be interpreted as private income effects, likely to derive from tight liquidity constraints.

Cet article évalue de manière systématique l'impact du mois de naissance sur les trajectoires scolaires et professionnelles à partir de données françaises très riches. Nos résultats indiquent que, bien que les écarts de performances entre les élèves nés en décembre et les élèves nés en janvier tendent à diminuer avec l'âge, ils restent significatifs jusqu'à la fin du lycée. Dans le contexte français, nous montrons que le redoublement et l'orientation en fin de troisième pénalisent fortement les élèves les plus jeunes au sein de leur cohorte scolaire et expliquent que les effets du mois de naissance persistent à l'âge adulte.

We look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Côte d'Ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment, labor, height stature, and morbidity. Using precrisis (1985-88) and postcrisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the cocoa shock on child outcomes, whereby we compare children of cocoa-producing households and children of other farmers living in the same district or the same village. This causal effect is shown to be rather strong for the four child outcomes we examine. Hence human capital investments are definitely procyclical in this context. We also provide evidence of gender bias against young girls with respect to education and health care. We finally argue that the difference-in-difference variations can be interpreted as private income effects, likely to derive from tight liquidity constraints.

This paper estimates the long run impact of a large income shock, by exploiting the regional variation of the 1987-1989 locust invasion in Mali. Using exhaustive Population Census data, we construct birth cohorts of individuals and compare those born and living in the years and villages affected by locust plagues with other cohorts. We find a clear and strong impact on educational outcomes of children living in rural areas but no impact at all on children living in urban areas. School enrollment of children born or aged less than seven years old at the time of shock is found to be impacted. Children born in 1988-1989, the main years of invasion, are those whose school enrollment has been the most affected by the plague. The negative impact on school enrollment of boys is higher than for girls, but on the other hand, girls attending school and living in rural areas have a lower level of school attainment than boys. Controlling for the potentially selective migration behavior of individuals, differences in educational amenities do not dampen our results. Our results are also robust to different variations of the cut-off cohort.

In this paper, I compare two reforms that raised the minimum school-leaving age to 16 in France (1967) and in England and Wales (1972). Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that while the reform in England and Wales led to a 6−7 percent increase in hourly wages per additional year of compulsory schooling, the impact of the change to French law was close to zero. The results suggest that the major difference between the two reforms was that the fraction of individuals holding no qualifications dropped sharply after the introduction of the new minimum school-leaving age in England and Wales, whereas it remained unchanged in France.

This article provides evidence that schools can influence parents' involvement in education, and this has causal effects on pupils' behaviour. Furthermore, it shows how the impact of more involved parents on their children is amplified at the class level by peer group interaction. We build on a large-scale controlled experiment run in a French deprived educational district, where parents of middle-school children were invited to participate in a simple program of parent-school meetings on how to get better involved in their children's education. At the end of the school year, we find that treated families have increased their school-and home-based involvement activities. In turn, pupils of treatment classes have developed more positive behaviour and attitudes in school, notably in terms of truancy and disciplinary sanctions (with effects-size around 15% of a standard deviation). However, test scores did not improve under the intervention. Our results suggest that parents are an input for schooling policies and it is possible to influence important aspects of the schooling process at low cost.