Essays on education adjacent policies and academic outcomes
Date
2024
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The extensive benefits of education are widely recognized in the literature. However, the effects of education-adjacent policies on educational outcomes are not always considered or studied extensively from an economics perspective. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I look at the impact of a 1989 Ukrainian conscription law change that delayed the draft for university students until after they graduated. This provided young men in Ukraine with the opportunity to avoid the draft during times of potential conflict. I apply a regression discontinuity design to cohorts making university application decisions around two periods of political instability (1990 and 2004). I find a large effect on educational attainment: men graduating high school during an unstable time were 16-20 percentage points more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree. I connect these findings to the increase in university entrants in Ukraine in 2023 in response to the war with Russia. ☐ My other two chapters focus on academic achievement at the K-12 level. In my second chapter, I explore the mechanisms and the size of the effect of student safety on academic outcomes. Using a unique data set that stems from students’ perceptions of safety, I find large, negative impacts of feeling unsafe on student test scores when using student-level and year fixed effects. I also discuss instrumenting for safety via a school’s distance from a school shooting. In my third chapter, I examine the impacts of mandatory, daily recess on test scores and attendance using a 2017 recess law change in Florida. I apply a difference in difference design to compare schools in school districts that already had recess policies in place with those in school districts that were forced to provide it. I find a negative, albeit small, decrease in test scores and the percentage of students passing for schools suddenly required to offer daily recess and discuss the implications of this finding.
Description
Keywords
Educational outcomes, Academic achievement, Academic outcomes, K-12 level