Education over the Life Course

Full course description

Embark on a transformative exploration of educational choices throughout the life course. Analysing empirical papers from economics and sociology, we will dive into the "causation and evidence-based" realms of education throughout a person’s life. The highlights of the course are:

• Early investments and children’s outcomes: Examine the profound influence of early parental investments on children’s skills later in life.
• The role of schools in skill development: Scrutinize the added value of schooling in cognitive outcomes and how the absence of schools during a pandemic affects skill development and thereby socioeconomic inequalities.
• The effect of role models on educational attainment: Unveil the influence of female role models on girls’ academic performance and educational attainment in developing countries.
• Study choices: Discover why diverse individuals make different study choices and how to use information to reduce inequality in high- paid occupations.
• Lifelong learning and continued training: Explore the concept of lifelong learning and learn how to increase adults’ participation in work-related training.

You will gain these insights by reading and discussing empirical papers. We will teach you how to critically read empirical papers in the fields of economics and sociology of education. As we focus on evidence-based studies only, we will help you gaining intuition on identifying causality in complex societal phenomena. As you will see in the course, this is of high relevance when developing and implementing policies.