First-generation university graduates have been found to face a series of disadvantages on their pathway to higher education and the labor market. We use unique, national level data on high achieving university graduates to attempt to disentangle the importance of lower prior attainment from...

The gap in university enrollment by parental education is large and persistent in many countries. In our representative survey, 74 percent of German university graduates, but only 36 percent of those without a university degree favor a university education for their children. The latter are more...

This paper studies the effect of longer school days — induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools — on school performance. We combine data from the National Educational Panel Study covering 5771 primary school students with municipality-level information on all-day school...

In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We argue that low-achieving students may be particularly affected by the lack of educator support during school closures. We collect detailed time-use information on students before...

To study how information about educational inequality affects public concerns and policy preferences, we devise survey experiments in representative samples of the German population. Providing information about the extent of educational inequality strongly increases concerns about educational...

This paper studies the effect of longer school days - induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools - on school performance. We combine data from the National Educational Panel Study covering 5348 primary school students with municipality-level information on all-day school...

In spring 2020, governments around the globe shut down schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We argue that low-achieving students may be particularly affected by the lack of educator support during school closures. We collect detailed time-use information on students before...

We investigate public preferences for equity-enhancing policies in access to early child care, using a survey experiment with a representative sample of the German population (n ≈ 4,800). We observe strong misperceptions about migrant-native inequalities in early child care that vary by...

Numerous countries require teachers to assign comportment grades rating students' social and work behavior in the classroom. However, the impact of such policies on student outcomes remains unknown. We exploit the staggered introduction of comportment grading across German federal states to...

Children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to benefit more from early child care, but are substantially less likely to be enrolled. We study whether reducing behavioral barriers in the application process increases enrollment in child care for lower-SES children. In our RCT in Germany...