Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Efficiency and Equity of Education Tracking A Quantitative Analysis
Author-Name: Suzanne Bellue
Author-Email: suzanne.bellue@ensae.fr
Author-Name: Lukas Mahler
Author-Email: lukas.mahler@gess.uni-mannheim.de

Classification-JEL: E24, I24, J24
Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility, Education Tracking, Inequality, Efficiency

Abstract: We study the long-run aggregate, distributional, and intergenerational effects of
school tracking—the allocation of students to different types of schools—by incorporating
school track decisions into a general-equilibrium heterogeneous-agent overlapping generations
model. The key innovation in our model is the skill production technology
during school years with tracking. School tracks endogenously differ in their pace of
instruction and the students’ average skills. We show analytically that this technology
can rationalize reduced-form evidence on the effects of school tracking on the distribution
of end-of-school skills. We then calibrate the model using representative data from
Germany, a country with a very early school tracking policy by international standards.
Our calibrated model shows that an education reform that postpones the tracking age
from ten to fourteen generates improvements in intergenerational mobility but comes
at the cost of modest losses in aggregate human capital and economic output, reducing
aggregate welfare. This efficiency-mobility trade-off is rooted in the effects of longer
comprehensive schooling on learning and depends crucially on the presence of general
equilibrium effects in the labor market. Finally, counterfactual analyses suggest that
policies that reduce the parental influence in the school track choice can increase both
social mobility and aggregate economic output, improving aggregate welfare.

Note: 
Length: 93
Creation-Date: 2024-05
Revision-Date: 
File-URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp546
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:CRCTR224_2024_546