Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence From the German Short School Years
This article investigates how changing the length of the school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West German short school years in 1966-7, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year les...
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Published in | The Economic journal (London) Vol. 117; no. 523; pp. 1216 - 1242 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford, UK
Oxford, UK : Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.10.2007
Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing Oxford University Press |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | This article investigates how changing the length of the school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West German short school years in 1966-7, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year less of schooling while enrolled. I find that the short school years increased grade repetition in primary school and led to fewer students attending higher secondary school tracks. On the other hand, the short school years had no adverse effect on earnings and employment later in life. |
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Bibliography: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02080.x I thank Fabian Waldinger for excellent research assistance. I thank Josh Angrist, David Autor, Jens Ludwig, Jack Porter, Justin Wolfers, referees for this Journal and for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and participants at various seminars for helpful comments. I thank ZUMA Mannheim for their hospitality in allowing me access to the German Micro Census data. Some of the data used in this article have been obtained from the German Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung at the University of Köln (ZA). Neither the producers of the data nor the ZA bear any responsibility for the analysis and interpretation of the data in this paper. This paper was submitted before Jörn Steffen Pischke was invited to become an editor of the JOURNAL. istex:528F25236F9DB08D6D67B4D8F8482F2BD4FD4088 ArticleID:ECOJ2080 ark:/67375/WNG-CMNLD7TM-S and participants at various seminars for helpful comments. I thank ZUMA Mannheim for their hospitality in allowing me access to the German Micro Census data. Some of the data used in this article have been obtained from the German Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung at the University of Köln (ZA). Neither the producers of the data nor the ZA bear any responsibility for the analysis and interpretation of the data in this paper. This paper was submitted before Jörn Steffen Pischke was invited to become an editor of the JOURNAL. and for the Journal I thank Fabian Waldinger for excellent research assistance. I thank Josh Angrist, David Autor, Jens Ludwig, Jack Porter, Justin Wolfers, referees for this Quarterly Journal of Economics |
ISSN: | 0013-0133 1468-0297 |
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2007.02080.x |