Student Effort and Parent Attitude on Education Attainment: Evidence from Multi-year Survey in Gansu, China
by Ridge Zhong-yuan Ren
Abstract
This paper explores whether student effort and parent attitudes have varying effects at different stages of a student’s life in terms of educational attainment and job outcomes. With survey data in Gansu, China, a largely rural province in Northwest China that lags behind the rest of China in education, this paper employs a multivariate regression model. This method allows me to measure the achievement or outcome of the child between each successive wave of surveys and estimate which factors held the strongest effect on the next wave. Student achievement in early waves is measured by the student’s score on assessments in math and Chinese, and the later outcome is measured by the student’s income and the highest level of education achieved. This paper finds that effort in Math and math achievement have a positive association with better education attainment and career outcomes later in life. In addition, I find that parental education levels also have a positive association with child outcomes.
Pengpeng Xiao, Faculty Advisor
Kent P. Kimbrough, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: I25, I26
Measuring the Long-term Effects of Orphanhood
By Nicholas Thomas Gardner
This paper works towards developing the narrative of orphans whose parent or parents died from natural disaster. By taking advantage of the unanticipated nature of death from the 2004
Indonesian tsunami, orphanhood can be treated as much closer to random than similar literature using data centered on HIV/AIDS related deaths. We use a community level fixed effects model to attempt to derive a causal relationship between orphanhood and both education and log wages. Our models suggest that orphaned males aged 14 and older at baseline complete 1-2 fewer years of education than their cohorts. The adverse effects persist in the long-term, as these orphans earn 26% less than non-orphan cohorts.
Advisors: Duncan Thomas and Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: I24, I25, I31, J24, J31
Foreign Aid Allocation and Impact: A Sub-National Analysis of Malawi
By Rajlakshmi De
Understanding the role of foreign aid in poverty alleviation is one of the central inquiries for development economics. To augment past cross-country studies and randomized evaluations, this project data from Malawi is used in combination with multiple rounds of living standards data to predict the allocation and impact of health aid, water aid, and education aid. Both instrumentation and propensity score matching methods are used.
Advisor: Kent Kimbrough, Lori Leachman | JEL Codes: F35, I15, I25, I32, O12 | Tagged: Development, Education, Foreign Aid, Health, Malawi, Water
Neighborhood Effects and School Performance: The Impact of Public Housing Demolitions on Children in North Carolina
By Rebecca Aqostino
This study explores how the demolitions of particularly distressed public housing units, through the Home Ownership for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) grants program, have affected academic outcomes for children in adjacent neighborhoods in Durham and Wilmington, North Carolina. I measure neighborhood-level changes and individual effects through regression analysis. All students in demolition communities are compared to those in control communities: census blocks in the same cities with public housing units that were not demolished. Those in the Durham experiment community experienced statistically significant gains when compared to those in the control communities; the effect is insignificant in Wilmington.
Advisor: Charles Becker | JEL Codes: C23, H41, H52, H75, I24, I25 | Tagged: Achievement, Demolitions, Distressed Housing, HOPE VI, Neighborhood Effects, Public Housing, School Performance
