Educational Inequality (WP-22-19)
Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke, and Jan Stuhler
This chapter provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. The authors document large achievement gaps between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link between educational inequality and social mobility. They interpret this evidence from the perspective of economic models of skill acquisition and investment in human capital. The models account for different channels underlying unequal education and highlight how endogenous responses in parents’ and children’s educational investments generate a close link between economic inequality and educational inequality. Given concerns over the extended school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, the researchers also summarize early evidence on the impact of the pandemic on children’s education and on possible long-run repercussions for educational inequality.