This article empirically examines the external effect of family literacy on the earnings of illiterate workers. Considering recent findings that rural nonfarm sectors in developing countries are becoming more important in determining the welfare of households, this article tests two hypotheses:...

The purpose of this article is to quantitatively express the inequalities in Japan's educational system and to verify trends in the recent past. Since the 1950s, the rate of advancement to middle and high school has continued to increase, as has the average number of years of schooling per...

This study introduces a piecewise-linear relationship between student achievement and class size. Using student-level data from Japan, we find that piecewise-linear specifications clearly show a better fit to the data. We also find that a significant class-size effect is observed in the lower...

This article gives an overview of the empirical studies of the determinants of students' academic performance in Japan. Recent development in the availability of achievement data have enabled researchers, including economists, to identify the determinants of education outcomes. Economists have...