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Educational policy and intergenerational income mobility: evidence from the Finnish comprehensive school reform

Författare: Sari Pekkala Kerr , Och Tuomas Pekkarinen, Och Roope Uusitalo, Och

Publicerad i: Journal of Public Economics 2009, vol. 93, no. 7-8, pp. 965-973

Sammanfattning av Working paper 2006:13

This paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on the inter-generational income mobility in Finland. The Finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972-1977 replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the intergenerational income elasticity using a representative sample of males born during 1960-1966. The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across country during a six-year period. The results indicate that the reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by about seven percentage points.
Keywords: Intergenerational mobility, education, comprehensive school reform
JEL-codes: D32, J62, I20

This paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on the inter-generational income mobility in Finland. The Finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972-1977 replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the intergenerational income elasticity using a representative sample of males born during 1960-1966. The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across country during a six-year period. The results indicate that the reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by about seven percentage points.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility, education, comprehensive school reform
JEL-codes: D32, J62, I20

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