Hidden Gains or Hidden Gaps?: Revisiting the Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Educational Inequality

Michael Lachanski, University of Pennsylvania
Xi Song, University of Pennsylvania

This paper examines whether compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) in the 19th and early 20th centuries narrowed the educational attainment gap between high and low socioeconomic status children and proximate causes. Drawing on newly available data from the IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel and the NBER Census Linking Project, we construct a novel longitudinal sample of White, native-born father-son pairs that were exposed to CSLs. Using a modeling strategy that exploits variation in the timing and intensity of the laws across states within regions, we provide short and longer-run causal estimates of the effects of compulsory schooling policies on the relationship between family background and education utilizing a natural experiment counterfactual approach. As in prior work, we find that laws requiring more years of schooling modestly increased educational attainment for the population and equalized attendance. After their initial imposition, all but the most aggressive compulsory schooling regimes generated larger gains from higher socioeconomic status (SES) households. Among children participating in the school system at older ages, occupational attainment continues to predict 8th grade attendance, high school entry, and years of school completed in all cross-sections. Two mechanisms contribute to these results. First, lower SES students were disproportionately likely to be retained, reducing gains from the laws. Second, higher SES students were disproportionately likely to benefit from “spillovers” in the form of completing more years of schooling than required by the law in response to the law. A rational choice framework emphasizing class differences in relative risk-aversion can explain these findings. Although teacher/student ratios decline in response to the laws, we find no evidence of “coordination failure” in the form of reduced resources per student at the state-level in explaining their contribution to educational inequality. Historical social scientists should not assume that policies equalizing school participation necessarily translated to equalized educational attainment.

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 Presented in Session 100. Educational Reforms and Transformations: Revisiting Several National Experiences