Now, these studies are not perfect, but there have been several of them and they tend to get similar results. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359051/ Thus, I think it’s fair to conclude that years of schooling, particularly at the high school level, have a positive impact on income.
This study takes into account only university attendance, on a yes/no scale, measuring impact relatively to non-attending twins.
(side note: the second link is broken, but judging from the address, it points to the first study, probably a typo).
From the second study (about K-12 funding)
Event-study and instrumental variable models reveal that a 10 percent increase in per-pupil spending each year for all twelve years of public school leads to 0.27 more completed years of education, 7.25 percent higher wages, and a 3.67 percentage-point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty.
This paper again talks about the boost relative to underfunded students.
I would also say those two say very little about high-school level.
As far as I understand, the whole argument against schooling (which for example Caplan makes) is that it serves mostly as signalling, i.e. benefits from schooling are relative to the position of other members of the society. By limiting it across the society, you are thus not losing much—even if you find the correlation between school-ness and success in life later in the normal conditions, you should not expect it to be present if everyone is handicapped in the same way.
Interesting points. However, I think the study you referenced is a bit small to draw any significant conclusions from, given that there were only 12 unstructured homeschoolers. I also think that those homeschoolers are probably not representative of your average American middle class/low income student, who might have their parents (or single parent) working full-time and thus unable to homeschool them much at all. As far as I could tell, even the the “unschooled” kids still got a lot of guidance from their parents.
I think the signaling theory has some truth to it, especially at the university level, but I’m personally very skeptical of it at the the k-12 level. Schools allows societies to more efficiently distribute childcare, which is economically advantageous. It allows parents (especially mothers) to return to the workforce. It effectively allows adults to pool their resources together to make educating and looking after children a lot less time consuming and expensive.
Nevertheless, I think you bring up an important point. No school might not be that damaging for some kids. If schools continue to stay closed, I would guess we would see the following two things happen. 1) kids with rich/upper middle class parents might actually do better because their parents can afford to custom tailor their education. 2) Kids with poor/working parents will do worse because there will be basically no incentives for them to learn on their own and their parents will be unable to teach them. Thus, inequality between the two groups will increase.
You’re right about the small sample, I read the paper some time ago and forgot/didn’t notice that.
I think you’re also right about the K-12 school purpose as being more a daycare facility than anything else. I wouldn’t necessary expect custom-tailoring the education on a large scale—parents still have to work (from home or not) or need to take care of many other issues araising from the current situation.
My prediction would be that the inequality araising from that factor would stay ~the same, because first, I feel that education on that level doesn’t matter that much in the long run, second, because many extracurricular activities for middle/upper class are not available, and third, when it does matter, there is a greater focus on producing quality learning materials online, which further bridges the gap.
This study takes into account only university attendance, on a yes/no scale, measuring impact relatively to non-attending twins.
(side note: the second link is broken, but judging from the address, it points to the first study, probably a typo).
From the second study (about K-12 funding)
This paper again talks about the boost relative to underfunded students.
I would also say those two say very little about high-school level.
As far as I understand, the whole argument against schooling (which for example Caplan makes) is that it serves mostly as signalling, i.e. benefits from schooling are relative to the position of other members of the society. By limiting it across the society, you are thus not losing much—even if you find the correlation between school-ness and success in life later in the normal conditions, you should not expect it to be present if everyone is handicapped in the same way.
Also, no school is probably qualitatively different than heavily-underfunded school, as more funding can just remove the horrible-ness of the environment. The paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232544669_The_Impact_of_Schooling_on_Academic_Achievement_Evidence_From_Homeschooled_and_Traditionally_Schooled_Students talks about the relative advantage of students left to do their own thing (“unschooled”), compared to normal ones—and finds that going to school actually gives you just 1 year boost in education, which is, to say, not much.
Interesting points. However, I think the study you referenced is a bit small to draw any significant conclusions from, given that there were only 12 unstructured homeschoolers. I also think that those homeschoolers are probably not representative of your average American middle class/low income student, who might have their parents (or single parent) working full-time and thus unable to homeschool them much at all. As far as I could tell, even the the “unschooled” kids still got a lot of guidance from their parents.
I think the signaling theory has some truth to it, especially at the university level, but I’m personally very skeptical of it at the the k-12 level. Schools allows societies to more efficiently distribute childcare, which is economically advantageous. It allows parents (especially mothers) to return to the workforce. It effectively allows adults to pool their resources together to make educating and looking after children a lot less time consuming and expensive.
Nevertheless, I think you bring up an important point. No school might not be that damaging for some kids. If schools continue to stay closed, I would guess we would see the following two things happen. 1) kids with rich/upper middle class parents might actually do better because their parents can afford to custom tailor their education. 2) Kids with poor/working parents will do worse because there will be basically no incentives for them to learn on their own and their parents will be unable to teach them. Thus, inequality between the two groups will increase.
You’re right about the small sample, I read the paper some time ago and forgot/didn’t notice that.
I think you’re also right about the K-12 school purpose as being more a daycare facility than anything else. I wouldn’t necessary expect custom-tailoring the education on a large scale—parents still have to work (from home or not) or need to take care of many other issues araising from the current situation.
My prediction would be that the inequality araising from that factor would stay ~the same, because first, I feel that education on that level doesn’t matter that much in the long run, second, because many extracurricular activities for middle/upper class are not available, and third, when it does matter, there is a greater focus on producing quality learning materials online, which further bridges the gap.