Understanding How Students’ Skills and the Structural Barriers They Face Affect Their Economic Mobility

• In Event: Reimagining the Use of Standard Education Data to Signal Economic Mobility

Abstract

Education has long been viewed as a driver of social mobility (Blau and Duncan 1967, Labaree 1997), and a significant body of research documents long-term effects of educational policies and programs (e.g., Campbell et al. 2014, Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff 2014, Carroll et al. 2017, Jackson et al. 2016). But while the long-run effects of these specific experiences is well studied, less is known about the skills and competencies developed in school that more broadly predict economic mobility as adults, and how this varies across students and educational contexts.

To examine the influence of students’ skills on future economic mobility, we link uniquely rich data from the Oregon Department of Education with a wide variety of administrative records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau, including a range of income and employment information from IRS tax data, records of exposure to the criminal justice system, and self-reported disability status and health insurance coverage from the American Community Survey. This broad data allows us to describe a wide variety of possible connections between skills during K-12 education and adult thriving.

Our analysis focuses on students in the state of Oregon between 2005-2022 and examines the relationship between K-12 skills and competencies, as measured by elementary and middle school grade test scores and student truancy information, and our set of adult mobility outcome measures. Importantly, we use data on childhood household income to examine how results vary based on a student’s family income, allowing for an examination of whether the predictors of adult economic success differ based on the household’s resources available to individuals as children. We then examine heterogeneity by school and neighborhood effects to shed light on the potential barriers facing economic mobility. 

Current results are pending disclosure from the Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board and will be available in advance of the APPAM conference.

Author

• Lindsay Liebert, NORC at the University of Chicago
  Presenting Author