School Reform, Educational Achievement and Lifetime Income : Essays in Empirical Labor Economics

Abstract: The Impact of School Choice on Pupil Achievement, Segregation and Costs: Swedish Evidence. This paper evaluates school choice at the compulsory school level. We estimate the impact of an increased enrolment in private schools on average achievement using within-municipality variation over time. We find positive effects, shown to be the sum of a (small) private school attendance effect and a competition effect. We also find effects on segregation and costs.Age at Immigration and School Performance: A Siblings Analysis Using Swedish Register Data. This paper analyzes the role of age at immigration for the school performance gap between native and immigrant pupils by exploiting within-family variation. The critical age is about nine, above which there is a strong negative impact on performance. The results are similar for boys and girls, but vary by region of origin. A comparison of sibling-difference and cross-sectional estimates reveals striking similarities. Integration of Childhood Immigrants in the Short and in the Long Run: Swedish Evidence. I study childhood immigrants at different stages in life in order to examine the role of age at immigration for educational and labor market outcomes. I find that childhood immigrants tend later to recover strongly in terms of educational achievement. Yet, the same individuals are on average found to be poorly integrated into the labor market. Life-Cycle Variations in the Association between Current and Lifetime Income: Replication and Extension for Sweden. We apply a generalized errors-in-variables model, recently developed by Steven Haider and Gary Solon, in order to produce estimates of the association between current and lifetime income. We find strong life-cycle patterns. This implies that the widespread use of current income as a proxy for lifetime income leads to inconsistent estimates even when the proxy is used as the dependent variable. We find country similarities, but gender and cohort differences.