Segregation, peer effects and skill development in early childhood

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Hendrik Jürges; Professorin Dr. Kerstin Schneider
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 299286376

One of the most pressing issues in German education policy is the low educational achievement of children with migration background, as exemplified by a large proportion (about 15 percen) of each cohort leaving school without a leaving certificate. The weak performance in school has long-lasting effects on labor market and non-economic outcomes, such as political participation, crime rates, or health. In light of the recent literature on the importance of early child development, we believe that conducting interventions and addressing issues of heterogeneity at an early stage of education might be superior in terms of cost-efficiency than e.g. active labor market policies. Part of the explanation for the low educational achievement of immigrants even in the second or third generation in Germany, is the economically and socially disadvantaged background that prevails among immigrants. Social mobility among immigrants is lower. Additionally, residential segregation of immigrant families typically leads to ethnic segregation in preschool and school. If segregation turns out to have a detrimental causal effect on the cognitive development and educational attainment of immigrant preschool children, this has important implications for education policy (early intervention programs, school choice, or secondary school ability tracking) and social policy as well (antipoverty programs). This proposal aims at understanding the determinants and the extent of ethnic segregation in German preschools and the effect of segregation on early childhood skill development via social interaction in preschools. We plan to address the measurement of ethnic segregation and to estimate peer or composition effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills in German preschools using individual-level administrative data from the school entrance medical examination (SEM). The SEM is a compulsory and standardized examination of all preschoolers. It is conducted to assess the health status of school age children and to attest physical and mental school readiness. We supplement this data with administrative data on the city block level to describe the children´s neighborhood. The city block data provide detailed information on the population by ethnicity, income, employment, and welfare recipiency. Our analysis will explicitly take into account the possibility of non-linear peer effects to get a better understanding of a ´critical proportion´ of preschoolers with immigration background beyond which spillovers might become significant. The research contributes to the growing literature on the importance of early childhood conditions and early childhood interventions in the development of human capital. It can help to better understand the effectiveness of early childhood education programs that may have large private and social returns.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants