Global Trends in Socioeconomic Segregation Between Schools, 1964–2012

• In Event: 72.031 - International Perspectives on Socioeconomic Segregation Between and Within Schools

Abstract

Economic segregation between neighborhoods, school districts, and schools has increased in the US since 1970, raising the concern that educational and life experiences of children from different economic backgrounds are diverging (Owens, Reardon, & Jencks 2016; Reardon & Bischoff 2011; Watson 2009). This study examines whether increasing socioeconomic segregation between schools (“school SES segregation”) is a global trend.

In the US, increasing residential income segregation appears to be driven by increasing income inequality (Reardon & Bischoff 2011; Watson 2009). Owens (2016) finds that this relationship is particularly strong among families with children compared to those without, suggesting that high-income families’ neighborhood choices are driven by the characteristics of local schools. Although private and charter schools and other forms of choice decouple school attendance somewhat from neighborhood of residence, Owens, Reardon, and Jencks (2016) show that segregation between schools and school districts nevertheless increases in tandem with income inequality.

Recent decades have also seen a rise in income inequality throughout much of the industrialized world, due to increasing inequality in compensation as well as changes in tax policy (OECD 2015). Trends in emerging economies vary, with rising income inequality in Asia and falling inequality in Latin America and Africa (UN 2013). If income inequality drives residential income segregation throughout the world as it does in the US, we may expect to see these changes in inequality reflected in changing school SES segregation. At the same time, levels of school choice tend to be higher outside the US (OECD 2013), which makes the relationship between neighborhood and school segregation less certain.

This study combines 27 international large-scale assessments of primary and secondary school students over 48 years, representing 108 countries and about 4.8 million students. Each assessment includes at least one of the following three measures of SES: parent education, parent occupation, and the number of books in the household. School SES segregation in each country-year is computed separately for each SES variable using the rank-order information theory index (Reardon et al. 2006). Trends over time in segregation are then modeled using 2-level random effects models (years within countries), using linear and squared Year terms to estimate the trend. Finally, time-varying country covariates are used to predict variation across countries in segregation trends.

Preliminary results indicate that school SES segregation declined in most countries between the 1960s and the 1990s, a trend that coincided with the end of between-school academic and vocational tracking in many European countries. However, since the early 1990s, this pattern has reversed, and school SES segregation has begun to increase in most countries. By 2012, school segregation by parent education and occupation had nearly returned to 1964 levels. The timing of this reversal mirrors the beginning of the rise in global income inequality; and countries with the greatest increases in income inequality experienced the largest increases in school SES segregation. The project will also explore the role of other possible explanations for increasing school SES segregation, including increasing urbanization, declining fertility rates, immigration, school choice and privatization.

Author

• Anna K. Chmielewski, University of Toronto - OISE