Thema Bildung

Kulturelle Bildung: Bildungsinvestition, sozialpolitische Chance oder Instrumentalisierung der Kultur?

Die Rolle von kultureller Bildung in unserer Gesellschaft wird zunehmend kontrovers diskutiert. Verliert sie an Bedeutung, da Kultur den Sparzwängen der Politik zum Opfer fällt und Jugendliche durch G8 und Schulstress keine Zeit mehr für Musikschule haben? Bietet die Förderung kultureller Teilhabe neue Chancen für die Sozialpolitik? Oder wird Kultur gar zu Bildungszwecken instrumentalisiert? Dieser ...

Economic Growth Evens-out Happiness: Evidence from Six Surveys

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has dropped in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern growth has reduced the share of both the "very unhappy" and the "perfectly happy". The extension of public amenities has certainly contributed to this greater happiness homogeneity. This ...

Is It the Family or the Neighborhood? Evidence from Sibling and Neighbor Correlations in Youth Education and Health

In this paper we present sibling and neighbor correlations in school grades and cognitive skills as well as indicators of physical and mental health for a sample of German adolescents. In a first step, we estimate sibling correlations and find substantial influence of shared family and community background on all outcomes. To further disentangle the influence of family background and neighborhood, ...

Familienbezogene Infrastruktur

Who Dares, Wins? A Sibling Analysis of Tertiary Education Transition in Germany

Past studies have found that parental background has a considerable impact on educational decisions. Our knowledge is, however, still limited regarding educational transitions later in life, such as into tertiary education. Is parental background a predominant factor in this relatively late educational decision, or do individual talent and determination have an impact of their own? We address this ...

Early Birds in Day Care: The Social Gradient in Starting Day Care and Children's Non-cognitive Skills

In recent years, almost all children below school age in Western industrialized countries have some experience of attending day care institutions. However, the age at which children enter day care and therefore the overall time spent in day carevaries substantially. We investigate the potential impact of later day care entry on the social and emotional behaviour of children, one important aspect of ...

Maternity Leave and Its Consequences for Subsequent Careers in Germany

This paper analyzes the wage development of mothers interrupting their careers, in comparison to the wages of men who do not face a parental interruption. We estimate OLS regression models for different subcategories defined by age and point in time. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel from 1984 to 2011, to show that wages and the financial penalty for maternity differ according to the ...

Childcare Trends in Germany: Increasing Socio-Economic Disparities in East and West

In East Germany, prior to reunification, daycare provision was widely available to encourage mothers to return to work soon after giving birth. Conversely, in West Germany, childcare facilities for under-threes were few and far between and, at the end of the ’80s/ beginning of the ’90s, the length of parental leave was gradually extended up to three years following the birth of a child. Since 2005, ...

Two Steps Forward - One Step Back? Evaluating Contradicting Child Care Policies in Germany

We apply a structural model of mothers’ labor supply and child care choices to evaluate the effects of two childcare reforms in Germany that were introduced simultaneously in August 2013. First, a legal claim to subsidized child care became effective for all children aged one year or older. Second, a new benefit called ‘Betreuungsgeld’ came into effect that is granted to families who do not use public ...

Impact of Education Programs in Colombian Conflict Areas: Children Attend School More Frequently But Performance Has Barely Improved

Policy programs in developing countries aimed at supporting certain sectors of the population in individual areas play a crucial role in development cooperation. Examples include programs to improve access to education. But what impact do such programs really have? The present study by DIW Berlin examines the impact of a welfare program on the learning success and participation of children in Colombian ...