Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Educational inequalitie'

The present doctoral thesis investigates grade repetition (GR) as a selection and recovery device, emphasising its implications on the broader process of transmission of educational inequalities and social stratification. The present thesis intends to add to the educational stratification literature with a systematisation of GR literature, an enrichment of the knowledge upon the understudied Italian context, and as well as a vast, novel empirical analysis of the selection, consequences and impact of this educational practice. The empirical examination utilises a vast longitudinal database of students that provides information about academic performance and socioeconomic status (SES) and migration background. The primary empirical source of this work was the set of administrative data about individual educational careers that were collected by the National Register of Students. The records refer to the Northern Italian population of upper-secondary students in four recent academic years (almost 600,000 individual students). The empirical results unambiguously illustrate that, consistently across learning contexts, GR appears to disproportionally select disadvantaged students. Even after accounting for academic performance, disadvantaged kids (i.e. with low SES and a migration background) had a drastically higher risk of GR at the end of ninth grade compared to their advantaged peers (i.e. those with high SES and a native background). The causal analysis in this work finds no convincing empirical evidence of the educative or recovery consequences of GR, which generally pushes students toward a downward change of school and unequivocally increases students’ chances to drop out from school. Moreover, students in academic tracks and culturally advantaged families tend to react to GR by changing school, while students in non-academic tracks and with no- or low-educated parents tend to drop out.

This thesis examines inequality of educational opportunities (IEO) in the transition to higher education. IEO measures the difference in higher education entry rates across social groups. The theoretical framework lays on Boudon's decomposition of IEO into primary and secondary effects of stratification. Furthermore, the theoretical propositions of Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) and Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) were also assessed to gain further understanding of IEO. The longitudinal data for the empirical analysis was created for a student cohort by linking administrative records of Chile's national student register, standardised tests and higher education enrolment. The student cohort was followed through the 12-years of compulsory education up to the transition to higher education, a year after completing secondary education. The results from the empirical analysis showed that secondary effects were consistently predominant over primary effects, driving the overall IEO. On the other hand, controlling for school characteristics increased the relative importance of secondary effects. However, primary effects explained a large extent of IEO in the transition to traditional (most prestigious) universities, by the same token, in the transition to undergraduate programmes. Differences in parental education levels between secondary education completion and higher education transitions proved to be consistent with MMI. Likewise, the higher likelihood of less advantaged students to enrol in vocational colleges or vocational programmes, and the higher likelihood of advantaged students to enrol in traditional universities or undergraduate programmes, evidenced support for EMI. The modelling setting was based on non-linear mediation modelling, accounting for sample-selection in the student cohort, two-level cross-classification between primary and secondary schools, and multinomial outcomes for type of institution and programme. This thesis contributes to the educational attainment literature by finding evidence that, in emerging economies like Chile, educational inequality persists despite the sustained expansion of the educational system.

This thesis examines gender and educational inequality in South Korea. Its focus is to investigate the plausible mechanisms that account for the negative effects of education on married women's participation in the country's labour force by examining several aspects of gender inequalities. Korean women's education and labour market participation grew after the late industrialisation that occurred in the 1960s. Considering the historical exclusion of women in Korean society, this progress is noticeable. However, few Korean studies have examined patterns and trends of gender and educational inequalities systematically. This lack of attention propelled me to conduct a comprehensive study, especially a thorough analysis of the linkage among education, marriage and women's involvement in the country's labour markets. By using the most recent, nationally representative datasets, I found that the extent of gender'inequality in educational attainment remains substantial, even though the gender gap has generally decreased. The rate ofthe decrease was slowest for tertiary level of education, and women from farming class origins were likely to receive the lowest education. I also observed an unexpected pattern related to the benefit of education in occupational achievement: the impact of education on obtaining prestigious occupations was greater for women than for men. In relation to married women's labour market participation, my research revealed that the negative effect of education on women's labour market participation was affected by marital status and husbands' resources. Of interest, too, is the finding that highly educated women were less willing to accept paid jobs after they had married. This implies that strong educational homogamy in marriage and gender role attitudes may be important factors in deciding to stay at home. I believe that the results of my study, based as they are on current data, provide a comprehensive account of the patterns of gender. and educational inequality experienced by both genders in South Korea.

Social factors have long been included in theories that aim at explaining educational inequality, for example social integration or social influence from significant others. Using social network data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), I am investigating to what extent social aspects can contribute to our understanding of ethnic and gendered patterns in educational inequality. The first two empirical chapters focus on explaining ethnic patterns in school grades and in the aspirations to attend university. In these, I find a positive relationship between low school grades and extent of social exclusion, measured through the absence of friendships and the existence of social rejection from classmates. This helps explaining ethnic grade disadvantages of recently arrived migrants, since they are more likely to be socially excluded. Further, I use friendship network data to detect social clusters within school classes, and find that changes in cluster members' aspirations are relatively more important for changes in individual aspirations than the corresponding changes of classmates outside of the social cluster. These chapters use an ego-centric network approach, i.e. they utilise social network data to capture characteristics of the social dimension around individuals and analyse them in regression models on the individual level. The latter two empirical chapters investigate how social influence can stabilise gendered patterns of favourite subjects and competence beliefs. Examining why girls get discouraged from subjects in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM), I find evidence for influence from friends on favourite subjects, as well as for the tendency of girls to be affected by the preferences of other girls in the classroom specifically when it comes to preferences for STEM subjects. Moreover, I show that there is a social influence from friends on maths competence beliefs, especially for boys, while girls tend to be more influenced by maths grades. These two chapters take a socio-centric approach, i.e. they deploy complete network analysis to detect patterns of social influence, while accounting for network structures and processes. This thesis shows that social aspects can contribute valuable insights into the study of educational choice and attainment. In identifying concrete social mechanisms surrounding and affecting individuals, this approach can thus help us understand how differences in educational outcomes come about.

Brazil faces low levels of educational achievement at the tertiary level. Historically, higher education institutions in Brazil are predominately attended by wealthier individuals. Two educational initiatives, Prouni, a scholarship program for private tertiary institutions, and Lei de Cotas 2012, an affirmative action law for public institutions, have been implemented to assist students coming from low income backgrounds. The majority of individuals in low income brackets in Brazil tend to be people of color, so inadvertently these policies may have an effect on racial minorities. This study explores the effect of the aforementioned policies on racial minority groups in higher education by reviewing previous studies and analyzing racial demographic data of higher education institutions, and concludes that the Lei de Cotas is most effective for students from racial minority backgrounds.

Cette thèse analyse l’efficacité des dispositifs mis en place par la puissance publique pour atteindre leurs trois principaux objectifs : attirer et retenir des enseignants de qualité, aider les enseignants à s’améliorer, et appareiller les enseignants à leurs élèves de façon à réduire les inégalités éducatives. Par rapport à l’essentiel de la littérature académique existante consacrée aux politiques éducatives à destination des enseignants, cette thèse élargit le champ d’analyse au rôle d’acteurs peu étudiés dans la littérature : les jurys des concours de recrutement, les inspecteurs d’académie et les chefs d’établissement, mais aussi les enseignants remplaçants, qu’ils soient titulaires ou contractuels .Elle étend enfin la discussion au système éducatif dans son ensemble à travers l’analyse d’un mécanisme d’incitations non-monétaires mis en place pour attirer et retenir les enseignants dans les établissements défavorisés
This dissertation analyses the efficiency of teacher policies in France with regard to their three main objectives: attract and retain quality teachers, help teacher progress and reduce educational inequalities through the matching of teachers to their students

This study explores how higher education choices are shaped for students from different social backgrounds in a Croatian higher education setting and how these students experience their first year of study and progress through it. The research design includes questionnaire data with responses from 642 first year undergraduate students at six case study faculties within the University of Zagreb; interview data collected from 28 students at the same six faculties whose first year educational experience and progress were more closely examined; and statistical data including information for all Croatian students. The study has engaged with Bourdieu’s different types of capital, habitus and field in order to propose a relatively holistic approach to understanding social differences in higher education participation. The study has identified an interrelated web of influence as shaping student choices and experiences: inherited or acquired capitals (cultural, social, economic and emotional), gender, and fields of the past (secondary education field), present (HE field) and future (labour market). The analysis indicates that institutional practices educationally reinforce social (dis)advantage through their (mis)recognition of resources which are unevenly distributed among students, thus positioning those with inherited capitals at an educational advantage. In this study, ‘inheritors; were identified as second generation students, who had attended a secondary grammar school, with the necessary financial resources, supportive parents and appropriate living and studying conditions. In the case of students with low initial capitals, examples of transformative educational practices were related primarily to the fields they interacted with, which acted as sources of capital influencing their practices. However, it was more often the case that fields reinforced existing capitals rather than provided new ones.

In spite of educational expansion, a considerable number of individuals are not able to participate in upper secondary and higher education in Mexico. The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the factors influencing individuals’ opportunities to make higher educational transitions in Mexico. These transitions are: participation in upper secondary education, completion of upper secondary education and progression to higher education. A parallel objective is to investigate the predictors of persons’ institutional location in the upper secondary level. It is argued that the majority of the international studies in the field of educational transitions, as well as most of the studies conducted for Mexico in this area, have focused on examining the chances of entering an educational level but less attention has been paid on examining the opportunities of concluding a given level of education. This dissertation explores the chances of completing upper secondary education and it incorporates school dropouts in the analysis of educational transitions. Another important purpose is to conduct interdisciplinary theoretical work. A theoretical framework composed of the capability approach, sociocultural reproduction theory and contemporary sociological perspectives on inequalities in education is used to operationalize key concepts and to provide possible explanations of persons’ decisions to participate in upper secondary and higher education. From the capability approach, human agency, preferences and rationality have influence on educational decision-making. From Bourdieu’s sociocultural reproduction theory, educational choices are not freely made because they are determined by cultural and socioeconomic constraints. Furthermore, drawing on the integrative theoretical framework several hypotheses are formulated and some of them are empirically tested using national survey data for Mexico: The School Dropouts Survey, 2011. The investigation adopts a quantitative methodology which includes the estimation of binomial and multinomial logistic regression models. This study found that the effects of ascriptive factors such as social and ethnic background, gender and geographical location vary for each school transition. In addition, some of these factors contribute to predict person’s location in academic and vocational pathways of upper secondary education. Nevertheless, individuals’ capacity to attain higher levels of schooling is not completely determined by structural-related aspects. This thesis found that agency and capability dimensions such as freedom to choose school, aspirations and persons’ preferences towards education are not only intrinsically valuable but instrumentally relevant for making higher educational transitions. Furthermore, the type of institution attended and academic performance matter for entering and completing upper secondary and for attending higher education. This thesis concludes that the degree to which structural factors, agency and capability dimensions and school experiences make an impact on individuals’ educational trajectories is significantly affected by specific institutional arrangements at each stage of education. Finally, the empirical evidence of this thesis has a number of important implications for educational policies in Mexico.

By placing particular attention to the socio-economic dimension, this thesis explores the role of three pillars of an educational system: decentralization, early education and curricular tracking. The first article focuses on an experiment in Mexico that aimed to increase parental empowerment in the school's decision-making. Results show that increased participation produced an increase in cognitive abilities, however, this was mediated by the SES of the student. The second article brings an international perspective by comparing the evolution of the achievement gap over time in 32 countries. The findings suggest that tracking and vocational enrollment are important explanatory mechanisms of the cross-country variability in achievement gaps. The third article studies whether early education is associated with adult outcomes but concentrating on a particularly vulnerable population in the United States: GED recipients. Results show that participation in early education is associated with greater odds of graduating high school over attaining a GED.
Esta tesis explora el rol de tres pilares de un sistema educativo: descentralización, educación temprana y seguimiento curricular. El primer artículo estudia un experimento en México que tuvo como objetivo aumentar el empoderamiento de padres en la toma de decisiones en la escuela. Los resultados muestran que mayor participación de los padres aumentó las habilidades cognitivas de sus hijos. Sin embargo, esto fue mediado por el SES del estudiante. El segundo artículo compara la evolución de la brecha de logros en 32 países. Los hallazgos sugieren que el seguimiento curricular y los estudios vocacionales pueden ser mecanismos explicativos de la brecha. El tercer artículo estudia si la educación temprana está asociada con resultados positivos en la adultez en Estados Unidos. Los resultados muestran que la participación en educación temprana está asociado con mayores probabilidades de graduarse de la escuela secundaria en comparación con la obtención de un GED.

This dissertation provides evidence of the return to education in Iran as well as measurement of inequality of opportunity and the Human Opportunity Index using cross-section data of Trends in Mathematics and Science Studies and Harmonized Household Income and Expenditure Surveys of several Middle Eastern Countries. The first chapter studies the return to education and the effect of school availability on education attainment in Iran. The Census 2006 allows us to get closer to the district of schooling by focusing on non-migrants. We estimate the return to education and the effect of school availability both for migrant and non-migrant sub-samples. We employ school availability as an instrument to correct the ability bias. We find availability of school increases women's education attainment more than men's and it is higher among the non-migrant sample. Using instrumental variable, the return to education is 6.50% in 2012 suggesting an upward bias in OLS. The second chapter provides estimates of Human Opportunity Index (HOI) in the Middle East and North Africa. Our estimates show the HOI improve over time in MENA region and compare favorably with similar measures computed for other regions, notably Latin America. Using Shapley decomposition, we find that parental background and place of living are the most important circumstances explaining inequality of opportunity to access in basic opportunities. Understanding the change in HOI and factors that influence it most complement existing analyses of inequality of opportunity in education, earning, and consumption for MENA countries because they focus on aspects of inequality of opportunity that are largely provided by the state. The third chapter provides estimates of inequality of educational opportunity using TIMSS dataset. We estimate the index of IOP using the ex-ante approach both for the fourth and eighth grade. The computed index of IOP shows that there is an improvement in IOP both for mathematics and science from grade four to eight. The investigations about relevant inputs suggest that there is a negative relationship between educational expenditure and the level of IOP. The relationship between the index of IOP and average economic growth as well as GDP per capita is positive.
Ph. D.

The main argument of this thesis is that research has to take the institutional character of education seriously. Educational institutions carry considerable weight for outcomes of education and their design is a matter of intense political debate. This work focuses in particular on the institution of tracking that has wide-reaching consequences for the structure of education. The thesis consists of an introductory essay, together with three empirical essays. The empirical essays all acknowledge the main argument but study different outcomes and relationships connected to education. Essay I studies how the institutions of political economy and education together affect equality of income and equality of educational opportunity. This essay contributes to the literature by distinguishing the effects of the different institutions of political economy and education, as well as how they interact to affect the two contrasting conceptions of equality. The results reveal that tracking hinders equality of educational opportunity but is also related to better incomes for vocational education graduates in certain institutional settings. Wage bargaining coordination reinforces the more equal educational opportunities of weakly tracked contexts and improves the relative income of vocational graduates in these contexts. Essay II explores how education and tracking affect social trust. It makes two contributions. First, the empirical approach provides strong support for causal inference. Second, it is the first study to consider how tracking affects social trust. The empirical evidence finds no general effect of educational attainment on social trust, but decreasing tracking has a positive effect on social trust for individuals who come from weakly educated backgrounds. Essay III aims to explain cross-country differences in tracking by focusing on the impact of government partisanship. The study contributes to the literature by being the first comparative study to explore how partisan politics may explain differences in tracking and being one of few comparative studies there are on the topic at all. The results show that tracking is strongly related to a dominance of Christian democratic governments, whereas detracking reforms have mainly been carried out by social democratic governments.

Degree completion is as important as participation in higher education. To date, most of the research on this subject has investigated the association between socio-economic background and academic preparation to explain lower rates or non-completion. This thesis explores the role that individual, institutional and contextual factors have on degree completion chances. The first empirical chapter uses an individual-level longitudinal dataset to study the role that attainment on entry and socio-economic background have on students’ chances of completion. The chapter finds that attainment on entry significantly affects students’ chances of degree completion. It also reveals, however, that attainment on entry does not completely explain the socio-economic differences in degree completion chances in the system. The second empirical chapter examines the role that institutions have on students’ chances of degree completion. Like the first chapter, this one draws on the individual-level longitudinal dataset. Although the analyses discover institutional effects, they show them to have a small effect on the system. The third empirical chapter examines the role that teaching has on the probability that students complete their degrees in higher education. The findings show that teaching has a small but significant effect on students’ chances of degree completion. Teaching effects take place only at the most selective institutions of the system. The final empirical chapter examines the role that unemployment has on students’ decisions to complete a university degree. Using data from the Labour Force Survey, the research finds that higher unemployment rates have a positive effect on students’ chances of degree completion. This thesis contributes to the field by showing that stratification of higher education also translates to degree completion. The results confirm that selectivity and institutional effects are strongly associated. In addition, they show that where the institutional framework is concerned, there is a gradient for class effect in educational outcomes.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Urban Policy and Planning)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
According to standard economic theory, more people will obtain postsecondary education in response to the rising college wage premium. However, students from low income families remain less likely to earn a college degree than high income students, even controlling for academic preparation. My dissertation provides empirical evidence on the puzzle of low college attainment among low income students. First, I estimate the effects of motivational qualities on college graduation by performing multivariate regression analysis using National Education Longitudinal Study data. I find that motivational qualities measured in 8th grade, i.e. causally prior to postsecondary participation, predict college degree completion, independent of grades and demographic characteristics. Further, the positive impact is concentrated among disadvantaged students. Second, I examine if students possess adequate information about college preparation and the application process by conducting observations and over 50 interviews with high school guidance counselors, advisors, and students in public schools serving poor neighborhoods. I find that students are familiar with college applications but they are unaware of their own academic performance and lack context to make effective use of college guidance. Third, I identify the causal effect of college selectivity on degree completion by using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data and instrumental variable estimation. I find that attendance at selective public universities increases the probability of graduation, controlling for grades and family background. This dissertation contributes to the literature by identifying the role of motivational qualities on college outcomes, increasing our understanding of student information about college, and assessing the impact of college quality on degree completion. The results have important public policy implications: 1) colleges can both improve graduation rates and increase student diversity by attaching more weight to motivation qualities in the admissions process, 2) schools must instill strong academic habits earlier so students can obtain higher grades and benefit from college guidance, and 3) students should enroll in the most selective colleges they are qualified to attend. Understanding the barriers to higher education for low income students is essential for increasing the proportion of college graduates and improving individual socioeconomic mobility, urban revitalization, and national economic competitiveness.
by Shomon Shamsuddin.
Ph.D.in Urban Policy and Planning

Bildung ist ein Instrument, das zur Bekämpfung von Armut, Ungleichheit und sozialer Ausgrenzung in jeder Gesellschaft eingesetzt werden kann. Für eine nachhaltige und ganzheitliche nationale Entwicklung ist daher eine gerechte Verteilung der Bildungsressourcen unter den Menschen erforderlich. Dies ist jedoch nicht immer ohne Weiteres zu erreichen, insbesondere in Afrika, wo der Kolonialismus in vielen Ländern teilweise zu einer ungleichen Entwicklung unter den Menschen geführt hat. Schon bald nach der Eingliederung der Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (heute Ghana) in die Kolonialherrschaft vernachlässigte die Bildungspolitik der Kolonialisten den nördlichen Teil des Landes. Obwohl es einige Studien zum Kolonialismus in Afrika im Allgemeinen gibt, wurde nur wenig darüber berichtet, welche Rolle er bei der Schaffung eines ungleichen Bildungswesens spielte. Auch die Auswirkungen von aktiven Förderungsmaßnahmen, die zur Überbrückung der Kluft zwischen dem Nord-Süd-Gefälle in Ghana eingeführt wurden. Die wichtigsten Fragen, die diese Studie daher zu beantworten versucht, sind die Folgenden: Was waren die kolonialen Begegnungen mit dem Norden Ghanas, die die Unterentwicklung des Bildungswesens in der Region bewirkten? Wie überbrücken die aktiven Förderungsmaßnahmen bzw. die positive Diskriminierung die Kluft zwischen dem Norden und dem Süden des Landes? Zur Beantwortung der Forschungsfragen wurde in der Studie ein methodengemischter Ansatz verwendet, bei dem Tiefeninterviews, Q-Methoden, Dokumentenanalyse und Beobachtung als Datenerhebungsmethoden Einsatz fanden. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die Kolonialisten eine bewusste Strategie verfolgten, den Norden zu einer Reserve ungelernter Arbeitskräfte zu machen, was erklärt, warum sie dort anfangs nur wenige Schulen bauten. Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen darüber hinaus, dass die positive Diskriminierung die Nord-Süd-Lücke nicht wie erwartet schließt. So kommt man zu dem Schluss, dass die Ausbeutung weitesgehend für die Unterentwicklung des Bildungswesens in Nordghana verantwortlich ist.
Education is a tool that can be used to fight poverty, inequality, and social exclusion in every given society. Thus, for a sustainable and holistic national development, there is the need for an equitable distribution of educational resources among the people. This is however hardly achievable, especially in Africa where colonialism has partly brought about unequal development among the people in many countries. Soon after the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) was incorporated under colonial rule, the educational policy of the colonialists did not favour the northern part of the country. Even though, there have been some studies on the colonialism of Africa in general, little has been done regarding the role it played in (re)producing unequal development of education in Africa. Likewise, the impact of an affirmative action instituted to bridge the gap between the north-south divide in Ghana has not been evaluated. The main questions this study thus seek to answer are: What were the colonial encounters with the north that brought about the underdevelopment of education in the area? How is the affirmative action bridging the gap between the north and the south? To answer the research questions, the study used a mixed-methods approach where in-depth interviews, Q methods, document analysis and observation were adapted as data collection methods. It was revealed that the colonialists adopted a deliberate strategy of making the north an unskilled labour reserve, thus accounting for why they did not build many schools there in the beginning. The findings of the study also show that the effect of the affirmative action has not been able to appreciably contribute to closing the north-south gap as expected. It is concluded that exploitation largely accounted for the underdevelopment of education in northern Ghana.

The concept of aspiration is central to current policy debates about educational and social inequality in the UK. Although aspirations have long been of interest to social scientists there is still uncertainty about how much aspirations influence outcomes and the factors that shape educational and occupational aspirations. I contribute to this policy debate and area of study by examining in detail the mechanisms that shape aspirations and the meaning that young people attach to them. It is often claimed that disadvantaged young people suffer from 'poverty of aspirations'. Contrary to such claims, my findings show that the vast majority of students hold high aspirations for pursuing further academic qualifications, including those from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. I therefore question the grounds for treating 'poverty of aspirations' as a major social problem that should be tackled through interventions designed to raise them. In this mixed methods study I draw on both quantitative and qualitative sources of data. The quantitative data is from the Effective Provision Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project (EPPSE). I examine the factors that are predictive of students holding high aspirations at the age of 14. The qualitative data I draw on is from twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with 16-18 years old from a sixth form college in East London. I contribute to the literature by showing in detail how aspirations are shaped by individual, family, school and neighbourhood level processes. In particular, I also show how important family life is in shaping aspirations and that in order to understand aspirations we should focus on the meaning young people attach to them. My findings suggest that our current models of aspirations are in need of refinement because they underestimate how high the aspirations of young people are and therefore struggle to explain how they are related to students' social backgrounds.

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In this paper we investiga te the impact of initial wealth anel impatience heterogeneities, as wcll as differential access to financia! markets on povcrty anel inequality, anel cvaluate some mechanisms that could be used to alleviate situations in which these two issues are alarming. To address our qucstion we develop a dynamic stochastic general cquilibrium modo! of educational anel savings choicc with heterogeneous agents, where individuais differ in their initial wealth anel in their discount factor. We find that, in the long run, more patient households tend to be wealthier anel more educated. However, our baseline model is not able to give as much skewness to our income distribution as it is rcquircd. We then propose a novel returns structure based on empírica! observation of heterogeneous returns to different portfolios. This modification solves our previous problem, evidencing the importance of the changes made in explaining the existing levels of inequality. Finally, we introducc two kinds of cash transfers programs- one in which receiving thc benefit is conditional on educating the household's youngster (CCTS) anel one frec of conditionalities (CTS) - in order to evaluate the impact of these programs on the variables of concern1 Wc fine! that both policies have similar qualitativo rcsults. Quantitatively, howcvcr, the CCTS outperforms its unconclitional version in all fielcls analyzecl, revealing itself to be a preferable policy.

Die konzeptionelle Verbindung zwischen Bildung und Gesellschaft, die im 19. Jahrhundert deutlich gemacht und wissenschaftlich begründet wurde, wird oft als selbstverständlich betrachtet. Diese veraltete Verbindung bildete aber die Basis für Bildungsreformen im Sekundärbereich in Deutschland und Indien in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Diese Arbeit unternimmt den Versuch, zum Verständnis dieser Verzögerung zwischen den Ideen und den Reformen, die sie einrahmten, beizutragen, indem sie eine geeignete Theorie der Verbindung zwischen Bildung und einer komplexen Gesellschaft aufstellt. Grundsätzliche Annäherungen an Gesellschaft und Bildung treten in Dialog mit post-kolonialen und kritischen Theorien. Universalistische Annahmen werden problematisiert, und eine offene Lösung für die Vorstellung zukünftiger Reformen wird präsentiert. Nationale Bildungsreformen in Indien und Deutschland nach ihren „Critical Junctures“ von 1947/1945 werden eingehend und chronologisch verglichen, um einen spezifischen Charakter historisch- und bildungs-bedingter Reproduktion beider Länder herauszuarbeiten sowie einen gemeinsamen Lernprozess zu ermöglichen. Abschließend wird eine Lösung des Problems in der Form offener Bildung präsentiert. Bildung als öffentliches Gut muss nicht zwangsläufig nur auf soziale Probleme reagieren, stattdessen kann sie verändert werden, um sozialen Wandel voran zu treiben.
The conceptual link between education and society, forged in the 19th Century, is often taken for granted. This seemingly outdated connection, however, has guided reforms in secondary education in India and Germany throughout the second half of the 20th Century. This study attempts to understand this lag between underlying ideas and the reforms they framed by synthesizing a viable theory for imagining the connection between education and a complex society. Foundational approaches to society and education are brought into dialogue with post-colonial and critical theories. Universalistic assumptions are problematized, and an open-ended solution for theorizing new connections is presented. National educational reforms in India and Germany subsequent to their critical junctures of 1947/1945 are exhaustively and chronologically compared in order to conceptualize a generic character of historical-educational reproduction for each country and to facilitate a process of mutual learning. Finally, a solution to the problems associated with educational reproduction is presented. Education as a public good does not need to simply be reactive to social problems. Instead, it can be reconfigured so as to drive social change.

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that countries which are able to reduce the inequality of educational attainment of young cohorts over time tend to have higher growth rates of income per capita. This effect is additional to that implied by the accumulation of human capital and implies that policies aiming at providing broad-based access to schooling have returns in terms of economic growth that go beyond those achieved by increasing average educational attainment.
Series: WWWforEurope

The first two pieces of work in this thesis look into the strategic decision of intergenerational educational investment and its implication to income inequality, skill distribution and income mobility. The contribution of my work is to incorporate matching frictions into the marriage market and analyze returns from strategic educational investments. The mechanism in the marriage market adopted follows the spirit of the competitive search model which interprets the ‘mismatch’ phenomenon as the result of coordination frictions in the matching process. The competitiveness and frictions in the family formation process create decreasing returns to high educational investment. The more parental households who choose high educational investment, the less is the return to high educational investment compared to the lower alternative. The fact that rich parental households suffer less from costly high educational investment puts the poor households at a disadvantage and the poor are more likely to be crowded out of the group that have incentives to choose high investment. The model predicts that given a certain parameter region, children of poor parents are more likely to become skilled if the fraction of rich parental households is not too large. In a multi-generational dynamic setting, it further implies the existence of a stationary household income distribution and income mobility rates. An increase in returns to education alone generates a larger stationary fraction of rich households and a larger upward income mobility rate. An increase in the cost of the high educational investment alone generates a smaller stationary fraction of rich households and a smaller upward income mobility rate. The third piece of work looks into the strategic interaction between passenger carriers over product quality and the location choice in a duopoly scheduled flight market. The model predicts that the two carriers prefer to be specialized in different flight quality (non-stop vs. one-stop) and adopt the same schedule when a higher quality difference makes the consumers less sensitive to the flight frequency. It contributes to literatures on the application of two-dimensional product differentiation in air-travel market analysis.

This thesis examines some of the issues surrounding extensive gender inequalities operating within the school, family and the wider society which affect girls’ rights to education. It reveals that institutional culture within the home, community and school reinforces gender inequality and continue to limit girls’ access to school and in performing equally to boys, especially in science and mathematics subjects. It is based on interviews, focus group discussions, observations and life history interviews I conducted with students (girls and boys between the ages of 15 and 22), school dropouts, teachers, parents and education officials in a secondary school in Ghana. Following a brief review of the literature on the construction of gender in general and femininity in particular, as well as literature on gender and education, focusing mainly on factors and causes of girls’ unequal access to, and performance in schooling in Ghana and Africa in general, I analyse the differential experiences of schoolgirls and how these gendered experiences impact on their performance, achievements, choice of subject and future aspirations from a gendered perspective, using the social construction of gender as a theoretical framework. It explores the ways in which teachers’ and parents’ attitudes discriminate against girls on gender lines and help to perpetuate particular perceptions and expectations about the appropriate education of boys and girls. This thesis also examines the factors and situations which contribute to the incidence of high dropout rates among girls in the study area with an emphasis on household factors such as poverty, pregnancy and gendered cultural practices. It analyzes how leaving school without adequate skills and qualifications impacts negatively on the career prospects of school dropouts, especially girls. It evaluates the successes and challenges of Girls’ Education Unit (GEU) and government policies at improving girls’ educational attainment and opportunities with emphasis on how educational officials perceive government policies in achieving gender equality in the study area and suggests gender sensitive strategies and policies that would help bridge the gender gap as well as provide guidance for educational policy makers in the Ghanaian education system.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the impact of gender inequality in education on economic growth using Sub-Saharan African countries. Two gender inequality indicators are used: the gap in female to male primary and secondary enrolment. The core of this study was built on the Solow Model but augmented using both human capital and health care expenditure (HCE) Per capita. The empirical analysis is centred on annual data for 40 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1990-2018. The method of estimation employed is both Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed effect within-group estimator in a panel data set. Thus, the main findings of this paper suggest that there exists a statistically significant negative relationship of gender inequality in education at the primary and secondary level on economic growth and a negative effect of female labour participation on economic growth.

Ma thèse s’intéresse aux questions d’inégalité, d’éducation et de développement du secteur financier en s’appuyant sur des modèles dynamiques (DSGE) avec agents hétérogènes. Au sein du premier chapitre, Martí Mastieri, Robert Townsend et moi-même utilisons des données relatives aux ménages mexicains, afin de mieux comprendre les liens entre le niveau d’éducation, les décisions des entreprises et les caractéristiques de ménages, comme par exemple leurs actifs, le nombre d’années de scolarité de ses membres, et l’âge du chef de famille. Nous construisons un modèle dynastique avec agents hétérogènes et à générations imbriquées. Les ménages décident à chaque étape du cycle de leur vie (i) les investissements dans le capital humain de leurs enfants, et (ii) les entrées, les sorties, et les investissements dans des modes entrepreneuriaux alternatifs. Ces décisions sont prises conjointement par chaque ménage en fonction de ses propres contraintes financières. Nous avons constaté qu’une version calibrée de notre modèle peut expliquer les tendances observées dans les données, au sein et entre les générations. L’acquisition endogène de capital humain joue un rôle moteur dans l’inégalité et sa persistance intergénérationnelle. Lorsque l’on élimine cet élément du modèle, la proportion du revenu du décile supérieur diminue de 56%. Lorsque l’on élimine les contraintes de collatéral, la consommation moyenne des ménages augmente de 7.1% et profite à la classe moyenne, dans la mesure où elle réduit à la fois les dépenses des classes les plus élevées et des plus pauvres. Elle diminue également de 29% la corrélation entre les actifs des ménages et le niveau de scolarité d’enfants. Dans le deuxième chapitre, Sonali Jain-Chandra et moi-même étudions l'évolution de l’Inde, qui a connu au cours de ces dernières années des taux de croissance importants ainsi que des progrès significatifs vers l'éradication de l'extrême pauvreté coexistant avec une augmentation des inégalités. Nous analysons les liens entre la prime de salaire liée à l’éducation et l’inégalité des niveaux de scolarité avec cette évolution récente. Nous développons un modèle avec agents hétérogènes, qui peuvent choisir de façon endogène leur niveau de qualification et leur occupation tout en étant contraints financièrement. De plus, notre modèle peut expliquer la variance dans la qualité de l’éducation et la dualité de l’économie. Nous calibrons notre modèle de façon à reproduire l’économie indienne avec des données relatives aux ménages. Lors de l'évaluation des effets possibles de différentes politiques, nous trouvons que, si gérés correctement, des versements en espèces ciblés et inconditionnels peuvent réduire l’inégalité et accroître la production et le niveau d’instruction pour un coût relativement faible. Dans le dernier chapitre, j’étudie le rôle de prêts basés sur le salaire dans la création des entreprises et ces effets sur l’inégalité. Ces prêts ont connu une expansion rapide au cours des dernières années, notamment dans les marchés émergents. Je développe un modèle avec agents hétérogènes (DSGE), d'une manière qui reflète les caractéristiques de ces pays et des prêts. Je calibre le modèle de façon à reproduire l’économie sud-africaine avec des données relatives aux ménages provenant de la base de données du National Income Dynamics ainsi que d’autres variables macroéconomiques. Je trouve que l’accroissement des prêts basés sur le salaire de 2008 à 2014 a conduit à la réduction de l’entrepreneuriat et de la productivité, et a finalement augmenté les inégalités. Cibler ces prêts sur les familles à faible revenu pourrait améliorer la production et réduire les inégalités sur le long terme. Cependant, ces prêts ne peuvent être véritablement efficaces que s’ils sont suffisamment importants
This thesis focuses on the development of heterogeneous agent DSGE models to investigate questions of inequality, education and financial development. It is composed of three chapters. In the first chapter, Marti Mestieri, Robert Townsend and I use household-level data from Mexico, to document patterns between schooling, entrepreneurial decisions and house-hold characteristics, e.g., assets, talent of members, and age of the household head. Motivated by our findings, we develop a heterogeneous-agent, overlapping-generations, dynasty model. Households jointly decide over their life-cycle on (i) kids' human capital investments (schooling) and (ii) parents' entry, exit and investment into alternative entrepreneurial modes (subsistence and modern). With financial constraints, all these are co-determined. We show that a calibrated version of our model can account for the broad correlation patterns uncovered in data within and across generations, e.g., a non-monotonic relationship between educational choices and assets across occupational modes, growth in profits and employment for modern firms only, and dynastic persistence across generations in education and wealth. Endogenous human capital acquisition is a key driver of inequality and intergenerational persistence. Eliminating this channel from the model would decrease the top 10% income share by 56%. Eliminating collateral constraints would increase average household expenditure by 7.1% and benefit the middle class, reducing top and bottom expenditure shares. It would also reduce by 29% the correlation between household assets and kids' schooling levels.In the second chapter, Sonali Jain-Chandra and I look at recent developments in India, which show impressive growth and progress in eradicating extreme poverty but rising inequality. We investigate the contribution of high skill premia and inequality in education levels to this development. We set up a model of heterogeneous agents, who endogenously choose their skill levels and occupations while being financially constrained. Moreover, we account for the large variance in the quality of education and the duality of the economy. We calibrate the model to India's economy today making use of detailed survey data. Evaluating different policies we find that targeted unconditional cash transfers can lower inequality and increase output and educational attainment at relatively low costs if designed carefully. In the final chapter, I investigate the role of payroll-based lending in the creation of entrepreneurship and its effect on inequality. Payroll-based credit has expanded rapidly in recent years, especially in emerging markets. I develop a heterogeneous agents DSGE model that captures the specific characteristics of these countries and loans. I calibrate the model to the South African market using micro data from the National Income Dynamics household survey and macro moments. I find that the increase in payroll-based lending from 2008 to 2014 leads to a decrease in entrepreneurship and productivity and an increase in inequality. Restricting access to payroll-based loans for households with low income levels can improve output and inequality in the long-run, while a substitution by developmental loans targeting the poorest can only be effective if they are large enough

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Sociology, 2009.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4635. Adviser: Maurice Garnier.

This thesis examines social-class inequalities in educational attainment. The central aims of the thesis are to assess the applicability of Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory and Goldthorpe’s rational choice theory. Drawing on the Millennium Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, the thesis conducts rigorous analyses on class differences in educational attainment (termed ‘primary effects’) and in educational decision making, controlling for previous attainment (termed ‘secondary effects’). The analyses find support for Bourdieu’s notion that cultural competence and particular class-characterised dispositions can generate educational advantage. For young children, however, these are not found to mediate the link between class and cognitive performance substantially, and are unable to account for the growing divergences that occur in the first few years of compulsory schooling. For older children, these are shown to be the main mechanism through which those from advantaged homes realise educational success. The thesis also examines trends in continuation in post-compulsory academic study and evaluates the usefulness of rational action theory for understanding the secondary effects of social class. Choice-based differences are shown to be of little importance for understanding the further disadvantage some pupils face once attainment has been controlled for. However, this finding is subject to the important caveat that the secondary effects of social class differ for white and non-white pupils. The thesis considers the implications of this finding for the Breen–Goldthorpe (1997) model of educational decision making and suggests the important assumption of relative risk aversion may not be appropriate for non-white groups. A range of statistical methods are used in this thesis, including some advanced techniques such as multilevel growth curve modelling. The thesis also makes a series of methodological recommendations for future studies. Finally, the analyses in this thesis show the overriding importance of parents’ education for children’s cognitive and educational attainment. This is demonstrably the most influential way in which social origin perpetuates differences between the advantaged and disadvantaged, at all stages of pupils’ educational careers. This thesis contributes to existing knowledge in this field in the theoretical, substantive and methodological domains.

La desigualtat educativa entre la població rural i urbana a la Xina no es deu només a la urbanització i desenvolupament econòmic. Les polítiques de separació i desigual distribució dels recursos educatius tenen un efecte molt important. Segons la teoria d’estructuració de Giddens’ (1984) el sistema educatiu com a part del sistema social té una dimensió temporal i en l’espai que escapa el control de qualsevol actor individual. Al mateix temps les teories sobre el sistema educatiu dels actors guien les seves accions i al seu torn afecten el sistema educatiu. Fins ara la recerca en sociologia ha fet servir la teoria de l’assoliment de l’estatus per explicar la desigualtat educacional. Això ignora els canvis socials a nivell macro i la distribució de recursos educatius (M.Horan, 2013). Per altra banda els estudis econòmics sobre la persistència de la desigualtat emfatitzen la importància de les condicions econòmiques familiars (Mookherjee i Ray, 2003). Basant-se en aquesta explicació econòmica que se centra en la persistència de la desigualtat les organitzacions internacionals i domèstiques intervenen sobre la demanda. L’objectiu és canviar les condicions econòmiques de les famílies amb ingressos baixos per estimular la seva preferència per l’educació. Però aquestes polítiques han sigut molt menys efectives del que s’esperava (Bonal, 2007). Per tant caldria afegir factors com ara l’estructura social, polítiques, cultura i característiques institucionals en els models teòrics. Històricament la població xinesa es va dividir entre residents rurals i urbans a través del sistema de registre de llars (sistema hukou) pel qual cada individu es registrava com a rural o urbà segons el lloc de naixement. El sistema hukou encara té una gran influència sobre l’estructura social i cultural. En aquesta tesi utilitzo el marc teòric estructuralista per analitzar la bretxa educativa entre la població urbana i rural a la Xina. La tesi té un doble objectiu: primer, aplicar empíricament la teoria de l’estructuració a l’anàlisi de la desigualtat educativa utilitzant mètodes quantitatius; segon, entendre les causes de la bretxa educativa entre la població urbana i rural a la Xina. Així doncs, la tesi conté una discussió teòrica sobre com aplicar la teoria de l’estructuració per estudiar la desigualtat educativa a més de tres estudis empírics. El capítol 2 utilitza el marc estructuralista per elaborar una relació recursiva entre estructura social i els resultats educatius de diferents agents. El capítol 3 conté la revisió de la literatura i el Capítol 4 introdueix breument les dades i mètode d’anàlisi dels tres capítols empírics. El Capítol 5 es el primer capítol empíric. Estudia com els canvis en el sistema econòmic i educatiu afecten la bretxa educativa entre la població rural i urbana a la Xina; el Capítol 6 analitza l’efecte de la distribució de l’oferta de recursos educatius en la bretxa educativa entre la població rural i urbana xineses. El capítol 7 estudia l’efecte de la demanda de recursos educatius sobre la bretxa educativa. Els resultats empírics suggereixen que la bretxa cultural entre la població urbana i rural a la Xina ha augmentat els darrers anys, però que la raó d’aquest augment en la desigualtat no són les diferències entre la posició social dels individus sinó de la desigualtat de l’oferta de recursos educatius i diferències en entorns educatius. L’últim capítol (capítol 8) dóna una visió general dels resultats més importants i suggereix que les polítiques igualitàries del període socialista encara influencien les expectatives educatives de la població rural, però que la distribució de recursos cada cop més desigual, i les barreres socials per la població rural, augmenten la desigualtat educacional entre la població rural i urbana a la Xina.
La desigualdad educativa entre la población rural y urbana en China no se debe solamente a la urbanización y el desarrollo económico. Las políticas de separación y la desigual distribución de los recursos educativos tienen un efecto muy importante. Según la teoría de estructuración de Giddens (1984) el sistema educativo como parte del sistema social tiene una dimensión temporal y espacial que escapa el control de cualquier actor individual. Al mismo tiempo las teorías sobre el sistema educativo de los actores guían sus acciones, y estas a su vez afectan el sistema educativo. Hasta ahora la investigación en sociología ha utilizado la teoría de los logros de estatus para explicar la desigualdad educacional. Esta teoría ignora los cambios sociales a nivel macro y la distribución de recursos educativos (M. Horan, 2013). Por otro lado los estudios económicos sobre la persistencia de la desigualdad enfatizan la importancia de las condiciones económicas familiares (Mookherjee i Ray, 2003). Las organizaciones internacionales y domèsticas intervienen sobre la demanda con el objetivo de cambiar las condiciones económicas de las familias de bajos ingresos para estimular la su preferencia por la educación. Pero estas políticas han sido mucho menos efectivas de lo que se esperaba (Bonal, 2007). Por lo tanto hace falta añadir factores tales como la estructura social, las políticas, cultura y características institucionales en los modelos teóricos. Históricamente la población china se dividió entre residentes rurales y urbanos por el sistema de registro de hogares (sistema hukou). El sistema hukou todavía tiene una gran influencia sobre la estructura social y cultural. En esta tesis utilizo el marco teórico estructuralista para analizar la brecha educativa entre la población urbana y rural en China. La tesis tiene un doble objetivo: primero, aplicar empíricamente la teoría de la estructuración al análisis de la desigualdad educativa utilizando métodos cuantitativos; segundo, entender las causas de la brecha educativa entre la población urbana y rural en China. La tesis contiene una discusión teórica sobre como aplicar la teoría de la estructuración para estudiar la desigualdad educativa además de tres estudios empíricos. El capítulo 2 utiliza el marco estructuralista para elaborar una relación recursiva entre estructura social y los resultados educativos de diferentes agentes. El capítulo 3 contiene la revisión de la literatura y el Capítulo 4 introduce brevemente los datos y método de análisis de los tres capítulos empíricos. El Capítulo 5 es el primer capítulo empírico. Estudia como los cambios en el sistema económico y educativo afectan la brecha educativa entre la población rural y urbana en China; el Capítulo 6 analiza el efecto de la distribución de la oferta de recursos educativos en la brecha educativa entre la población rural y urbana en China; El capítulo 7 estudia el efecto de la demanda de recursos educativos sobre la brecha educativa. Los resultados empíricos sugieren que la brecha cultural entre la población urbana y rural en China ha aumentado en los últimos años, pero que la razón de este aumento en la desigualdad no son las diferencias entre la posición social de los individuos sino de la desigualdad de la oferta de recursos educativos y diferencias en el entorno educativo. El último capítulo (capítulo 8) da una visión general de los resultados más importantes y sugiere que las políticas igualitarias del período socialista aún influencian las expectativas educativas de la población rural. Sin embargo, la distribución de recursos cada vez más desigual, y las barreras sociales para la población rural causan un aumento de la desigualdad educacional entre la población rural y urbana en China.
Educational inequality between rural and urban Chinese people is not only the result of urbanisation and economic development but also constructed by separation policies and unequal distribution of educational resources. According to Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory, the education system as a part of social system stretches away in time and space, beyond the control of any individual actors. At the same time, the actors’ own theories of the education system guide their activities which may reify the education system. However, most previous sociological research only uses status attainment theory to explain educational inequality, ignoring the effects of macro-level social changes and distribution of educational resources (M.Horan, 2013). On the other hand, economic studies on persistent inequality emphasise the importance of a family’s economic condition, leading to different preferences on their educational consumption (Mookherjee and Ray, 2003). Based on the economic explanation of persistent inequality, international and domestic organisations implement demand-side interventions, these aim to stimulate their educational demands by improving the economic condition of low-income families. However, those policies are far less effective than it had been expected (Bonal, 2007). Thus, it is necessary to add factors such as principles of social structure, policies, culture and institutional characteristics into theoretical models. Historically, the Chinese population was divided into rural and urban residents via the household registration system (the hukou system) whereby people were either registered as rural or urban residents according to their place of birth. The hukou system still has a great influence on shaping the present social structure and culture. This dissertation uses a structuralist framework to analyse the educational gap between rural and urban Chinese people. The objective of the dissertation is twofold: first, to empirically apply the structuration theory on analysis the educational inequality with quantitative method; second, to understand the causes of the educational gap between rural and urban Chinese people. In pursuing this objective, a theoretical discussion of the application of structuration theory to the study educational inequality and three empirical studies were conducted that together form the present dissertation. Chapter 2 uses a structuralist framework to elaborate the recursive relationship between social structure and agents’ educational outcomes. It argues that the agents’ motivation in pursuing higher education is shaped by both historical experiences and current social structure. Chapter 3 reviews the relevant literature and Chapter 4 briefly introduces the data and methods of analysis used in the three empirical chapters. Chapter 5 is the first empirical chapter, in which I analyse how changes to the economic and political systems affect the educational gap between rural and urban Chinese people; Chapter 6 analyses the effect of the supply-side distribution of educational resources on the educational gap between rural and urban Chinese students; Chapter 7 investigates the effect of demand-side educational resources on the educational gap. The findings in these three empirical chapters suggest that the educational gap between rural and urban Chinese people has been widening in recent years, and the driving force behind the widening educational gap is the unequal distribution of supply-side educational resources and differences in educational environments. The last chapter (Chapter 8) provides an overview of the main findings, and suggest they imply that the egalitarian policies from the socialist period may still affect rural Chinese people’s educational expectations. However, the increasingly unequal distribution of resources and social barriers for rural Chinese people is deepening educational inequality between rural and urban Chinese people. This kind of inequality will be difficult to reduce as long as the nation’s development model continues to be urban-centred and in the absence of redistributive policies.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Programa de Doctorat en Sociologia

My dissertation formally develops a theory of education-based inequality and mobility to integrate the existing theoretical accounts and results in the fields. The empirical puzzle I examine is why the triangle associations among social origin, educational attainment and social destination present various patterns in different societies under educational expansion. By using a variety of cross-sectional survey data from reforming China, I illustrate that class mobility strategies, structural and institutional features in the educational system and the sociopolitical institutional context are the most important dimensions to understand how educational expansion affects education-based social stratification and inequality. My analyses demonstrate that, with China’s “bottleneck” educational opportunity structure and rising educational cost under educational expansion, we observe increasing educational inequality, declining social mobility and increasing social origin differentials in the college premium in the last three decades.
Sociology

The focus of this dissertation was to explore the importance of high quality early education in later secondary education development, quantifying quality in early childhood education programs, and examining how teacher education contributes to quality of early childhood education programs. For phase I, early childhood education positively associated with improved eighth grade state proficiency percentages in the mathematics and writing summative assessment scores. When examining scoring procedures for Colorado Shines QRIS in phase II, programs that accepted Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP), were not part of Colorado Preschool Program (CPP), had children that spoke more than one language, and accepted infants overall scored the lowest scores of early education programs. Phase III results showed that teachers with bachelor’s degrees did not significantly improve overall student mathematics and literacy scores under TS Gold compared to students of teachers that did not have bachelor’s degrees.

This thesis comprises of two essays that explore issues related to human capital, technology and inequality. The first study examines the impact of human capital on recently created, direct measures of technology adoption. It indicates that the type of human capital that is formed via the learning-by-doing mechanism may be the most important determinant of technological diffusion, followed by qualitative determinants such as cognitive skills and quantitative or other measures. The second study examines qualitative measures of human capital from a microeconomic perspective by analyzing the composition and determinants of human capital inequality. Decomposition at school level reveals that each country has a unique set of determinants of within-school inequality. Compared to aggregated approaches used in extant literature, these findings suggest that a disaggregated, stepwise exploration of this type is more fruitful in identifying the root causes of inequality in human capital.

Past research has addressed the disparities in educational achievement for primary seven school leavers in Uganda but it did not take into account the multidimensional perspectives: those on poverty (as reported by the poor) and on educational inequalities between and within regions, particularly with regard to the impacts of the 1997 Universal Primary Education (UPE) policy. The central question for this enquiry was: whether the UPE policy reforms have eradicated the regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda given the evidence of a decade of UPE implementation (1997-2007). Five research questions arose: (1) What is the state of the regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda a decade after the launching of the 1997 UPE policy? (2) What are the perceptions of Primary leavers and adults on UPE and NFE and the effects of these interventions in reducing poverty and educational inequalities? (3) Is there evidence that UPE is helping poor people to escape from poverty? (4) How are poor people in Uganda socially constructed? What is the impact of the social construction of UPE on the learning outcomes of learners across the three different locations? and (5) How can UPE be meaningfully designed to help reduce regional poverty and educational inequalities in Uganda? The field data was collected during a year-long (June 2007 - May 2008) qualitative, field-based study of 16 Primary school graduates and pioneer beneficiaries of the 1997 UPE policy and of 34 adults – the latter identified by the nature of their role and position in relation to these UPE graduates. Broadly, the typology provides the central framework for a comparative study, through the diverse perspectives of Primary leavers, head teachers, education officials, community leaders and Education Executive Committee members and others chosen through a purposive sampling strategy, in three distinct education settings (the City, the peri-urban Municipality and the Village) using face-to-face interviews, focus groups and participatory techniques. The research adopted an integrated approach using critical ethnography, social constructionist and the emancipatory paradigms for triangulation. The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ II 2005 - Byamugisha and Ssenabulya) Survey on Numeracy and Literacy levels for Grade 6 in Uganda provided data to validate the findings from the integrated account and to support the thesis that UPE has not reduced regional inequality in Uganda. The study identified the following gaps for further research: (a) gathering robust disaggregated data to address exclusion – gender, disability, socio-economic status, ethnic origin and place of residence; (b) an investigation of the most practical and cost-effective approach to meet the education aspirations of the disadvantaged school-age out-of-school children and youths; c) a study of the impact of the language policy implemented through the thematic curriculum in the multi-lingual and multi-ethnic classrooms, (d) an investigation of the high attrition rates and the attribution of poor quality of UPE to teachers, and (e) a clarification of the meaning of UPE in Uganda from an inclusive and an equity perspective.