Does education foster trust? Evidence from compulsory schooling reform in the UK

Yang, Songtao

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.03.007

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Therefore, we assign treatment on the basis of year of birth, which has been used in other RD designs as well to estimate the LATE utilising compulsory schooling reforms (e.g. Cavaillé and Marshall, 2019; Marshall, 2016; Oreopoulos, 2006; Parinduri, 2014; Yang, 2019). Moreover, one of the issues of the RD design is that it requires a substantial number of observations around the cut-off.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries

Kunst

Kuhn

Werfhorst

2019

European Union Politics

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Previous research shows a strong and consistent relationship between educational attainment and Euroscepticism. As a result, education is considered to be a powerful predictor of attitudes towards European integration. However, these findings are predominantly found using cross-sectional research designs, therefore leaving open the possibility of strong selection effects due to pre-adult experiences and dispositions which both explain educational attainment and political attitudes. To test whether schooling causally reduces Euroscepticism, this article combines data on the compulsory schooling age with seven rounds of pooled European Social Survey data (2002–2014). Using compulsory schooling reforms within a ‘fuzzy’ regression discontinuity design, the results indicate no conclusive effect of education on Euroscepticism, questioning the impact of additional schooling. Consequently, this study provides a novel insight into the much-debated divide in support for European integration between lower and higher educated.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries

Kunst

Kuhn

Werfhorst

2019

European Union Politics

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“…Thus, Hypothesis 1 cannot be verified. This finding implies that the results from recent single-country studies (Yang 2019;Oskarsson 2017) hold for a broad group of European countries and across time; the causal effect of the length of education on social trust is most likely small or even non-existent. However, I find statistically significant effects of educational reforms that reduce the level of tracking, lending support to Hypothesis 2.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…This article builds on a similar approach as Milligan et al (2004) and Yang (2019) but includes a much larger number of reforms and countries to improve on generalizability. In addition, by separating different types of reforms the present study also makes it possible to explore how the effects of education differ with the degree of tracking.…”

Section: Correlation or A Causal Effect?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Earlier studies using educational reforms as a source of exogenous variation have only considered these reforms in terms of their effect on years of education by using the reforms as an instrument for education (e.g., d 'Hombres and Nunziata 2016;Brunello et al 2009;Yang 2019). There has been some discussion of the validity of this approach (Holmlund et al 2011), as the reforms are likely to influence outcomes in other ways than through educational attainment, thereby violating the exclusion restriction (Angrist and Pischke 2009).…”

Section: Educational Reforms As Quasi-experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, almost all of these studies rely on cross-sectional evidence and assume that the established correlations describe a causal relationship. This interpretation has come into question as more recent studies using research designs that allow stronger causal claims have been unable to unanimously reproduce a clear relationship between education and social trust (Sønderskov and Dinesen 2014;Glanville et al 2013;Oskarsson 2017;Yang 2019; but see, Huang et al 2011). However, these studies are scarce, and the results are mixed, meaning that the question of the causal status of the relationship remains undecided.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can We Trust Education for Fostering Trust? Quasi-experimental Evidence on the Effect of Education and Tracking on Social Trust

Österman

2020

Soc Indic Res

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Education is one of the most commonly proposed determinants of social trust (generalized trust). Nevertheless, the empirical evidence of a causal relationship between education and social trust is inconclusive. This study contributes to this discussion in two ways. First, its design provides strong grounds for causal inference across multiple countries by exploiting numerous European compulsory schooling reforms. Second, it considers how the structure of education, specifically between-school tracking, impacts the relationship between education and social trust. The article argues that less tracking is positive for social trust because it entails intergroup contacts between children with different social backgrounds. The results do not give support for a general positive effect of education on social trust as the effect of reforms that extend compulsory education is positive but small and not statistically significant. However, reforms that reduce tracking have a somewhat larger, but still modest, positive and statistically significant effect on social trust. The effect is more pronounced for individuals with poorly educated parents. The positive effect of detracking reforms goes hand-in-hand with more understanding attitudes towards persons with a different background than one’s own. The lack of a clear effect of reforms that extend compulsory schooling on social trust reinforces the findings of recent single-country studies that have been unable to confirm a causal effect of education on social trust. However, the effect of detracking reforms, albeit modest, shows that education can have a positive effect on social trust but that the institutional character of education may be a conditioning factor.

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The effects of compulsory schooling reforms on women’s marriage outcomes—evidence from Britain

Yang

2022

Empir Econ

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Does education foster trust? Evidence from compulsory schooling reform in the UK

Cited by 17 publications

References 42 publications

Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries

Does education decrease Euroscepticism? A regression discontinuity design using compulsory schooling reforms in four European countries

Can We Trust Education for Fostering Trust? Quasi-experimental Evidence on the Effect of Education and Tracking on Social Trust

The effects of compulsory schooling reforms on women’s marriage outcomes—evidence from Britain

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