Content area
Full Text
Abstract
The aim of the study is to examine the factors that affect educational achievements of children from low-income households in Macedonia. In addition, we compare the two distinctive social programs that provide assistance for children from poor households in the country. Our empirical strategy is based on the education production function, which is estimated using the ordinary least squares (OLS) and ordered probit approach. We regress an indicator for educational achievement on three groups of factors: i) individual characteristics; ii) household characteristics; and iii) school-related characteristics/variables.
The findings suggest that all three sets of factors are significantly related with the school performance of young individuals. Individual- and family-related factors are more important than the school climate, although this finding may be related to the availability (and hence, the choice) of the school-related variables. Gender, father's education, and ethnicity were found to be significantly related to the educational achievement of students. Among the family factors, we find that the number of rooms at home and household consumption are positively related to school performance. On the other hand, household size, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) acceptance and the measures of parental involvement are negatively related to achievement. We find that only one measure of school context, the average grade in school, is significant.
Keywords: school performance, low-income households, Macedonia, education production function, conditional cash transfers
JEL classification: I24, I28, I38
(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)
1Introduction
It is commonly understood that greater human capital is essential for higher productivity, growth and quality of life in general (Mendolicchio, 2005; Budria and Moro-Egido, 2009; Sondergaard et al., 2012). Education is the main avenue for the human capital of an individual to develop. Hence, children who are either left out of school or who underperform in school present not only a lost developmental potential for the society, but also suffer large individual losses (lower employment and wage prospects, lower quality of life etc.). There is increasing evidence that low school performance has long-lasting effects on students later in life (Blau and Kahn, 2001; Serbin, Stack and Kingdon, 2013).
Educational outcomes around the world are predominantly determined by socially-inherited factors (or circumstance) such as gender, parents' education, household income etc. rather than by factors that are in individuals' control, such...