The Long-Term Effects of Student Absence: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish individuals born in the 1930s. We find that elementary school absence significantly reduces contemporaneous academic performance, final educational attainment and labor income throughout the life-cycle. The findings are consistent with a dynamic model of human capital formation, whereby absence causes small immediate learning losses, which cumulate to larger human capital losses over time and lead to worse labor market performance.

The long-term consequences of early school absences for educational attainment and labour market outcomes

“…They also align with US studies indicating negative consequences of absences on educational and civic participation (Ansari et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2021). Our findings regarding the consequences of school absences on final educational attainment are also consistent with those of Cattan et al, (2022) for the Swedish context, which is the only other study examining long-term effects of school absences on educational and labour market outcomes in mid-adulthood. Despite the fact that absences have the expected negative effect on all labour market outcomes in both studies, we found statistically significant effects on nonemployment but not earnings, whereas Cattan et al (2022) found the opposite pattern.…”

“…Hibbett et al (1990) looked at Great Britain and found that skipping school at age 16 was linked to lower-paying jobs, less stable career paths, and more unemployment at age 23. Only Cattan et al (2022) used Swedish register and school administrative data to look at the long-term effects of primary school absences on employment and earnings up to the age of 40. They found that absences in early childhood reduced cohort member's final educational attainment and labour income but were not significantly related to employment.…”

“…Prior research has been limited to occupational and employment outcomes up to age 23 and has focused primarily on truancy as a measure of absenteeism (Hibbett et al, 1990;Croll, 2006, 2015). Cattan et al (2022) examined the influence of early school absences on labour market outcomes up to age 40 in Sweden, but for a much older birth cohort (1930)(1931)(1932)(1933)(1934)(1935).…”

“…The few existing studies did not sufficiently account for confounding risk antecedents (e.g., Department for Education, 2018; Attwood & Croll, 2006. Cattan et al (2022) employed a sibling fixed effects design to exploit within-family variation in absences and account for all time-invariant family-level factors. Nonetheless, time-varying (family) characteristics may affect siblings differently and render associations between absences and outcomes spurious.…”

“…Most studies have tended to focus on more immediate post-school outcomes such as the likelihood of enrolling in college in the US (Liu et al 2021), the number of years spent in postsecondary education in the US (Ansari et al 2020), or occupational and employment outcomes up to age 23 in a UK context (Hibbett et al, 1990;Croll, 2006, 2015;Department for Education, 2018). Only Cattan et al (2022) evaluated the longer-term effects of primary school absences on final educational attainment, employment, and labour income up to age 40 using Swedish register and school administrative data for a cohort born between 1930-35. We add to this literature by considering a more recent cohort born in 1970.…”