Essays on Educational Inequality and Policy

Author

Strifezzi Leal, Guilherme

Director

Choi Mendizábal, Álvaro B. (Álvaro Borja)

Tutor

Choi Mendizábal, Álvaro B. (Álvaro Borja)

Date of defense

2022-07-28

Pages

141 p.



Department/Institute

Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa

Abstract

This dissertation is composed of three independent but related research articles, each one studying a specific Brazilian policy/program targeted to enhance access of vulnerable groups to higher education. While the articles investigate considerably different policies, they all essentially address the same issue, which is how the public sector can efficiently use its tools to reduce the barriers to higher education, and if the evaluated – or similar – policies may or not serve as a guide to policy makers worldwide who wish to increase the efficiency and equality of opportunity of their educational systems. In the first article, I analyze the effects of a law that implemented racial quotas in Brazilian federal universities on the pre-college academic performance of non-white individuals. The objective of this article is to provide a better understanding of the incentives provided by affirmative action in education – a matter that is ambiguous from a theoretical perspective and lacks empirical evidence. This research provides evidence that the Law of Quotas fostered incentives to pre-college human capital accumulation as it induced non-white students to attain higher scores on Brazil’s high school exit exam. Therefore, the implementation of racial quotas in higher education not only promotes equity, but also brings about efficiency gains, as it encourages non-white students to close the performance gap with white students by the end of secondary education. In the second article, I investigate the effects of a Brazilian federal program (the Prouni) that grants full and partial college scholarships to students from low-income families on access to HE. The objective of this article is to examine the effectiveness of financial aid to college students on promoting human capital accumulation. To this end, I exploit the introduction of the Prouni in 2005 by employing a difference-in-differences methodology, such as to evaluate the effects of the program on the higher education enrolment rates of low-income students. This research provides evidence that, by the third year after its implementation, the Prouni had increased the odds of attending higher education by 37% for individuals entitled to the full scholarship and by 20% for those entitled to the partial scholarship. Moreover, it is estimated that every US$ 1,000 spent per student generated an approximate 0.8 percentage points increase in the HE enrolment rate of academic age individuals - similar to those found in developed economies. The findings from this research also suggest that the impacts of the grants on access to higher education were greater for women and for non-white persons. In the third article, I study the welfare and labor supply effects of different student loan schemes in higher education, by developing a partial equilibrium microsimulation model in which graduates maximize their expected utilities under wage uncertainty, risk aversion and elastic labor supply. The model predicts that shifting from a mortgage loan to an income-contingent loan (ICL) scheme shall (i) decrease labor supply; (ii) increase graduates’ expected welfare; (iii) reduce repayment burdens, and (iv) increase the number of years until the debt is fully repaid. The model is then calibrated with real Brazilian data and the results confirm the predictions when changing the Brazilian government-backed student loan program to an ICL. I find that shifting to an ICL is especially welfare-enhancing for women and non-white people, two population groups who have lower initial earnings, flatter income growth curves throughout their working lifetimes and who also face greater unemployment risks.

Keywords

Economia de l'educació; Economía de la educación; Economy of the education; Educació superior; Enseñanza superior; Higher education; Desigualtat social; Desigualdad social; Social inequality; Inferència; Inferencia; Inference

Subjects

33 - Economics. Economic science; 378 - Higher education. Universities. Academic study

Knowledge Area

Ciències Jurídiques, Econòmiques i Socials

Note

Programa de Doctorat en Economia

Documents

GSL_PhD_THESIS.pdf

1.438Mb

 

Rights

ADVERTIMENT. Tots els drets reservats. L'accés als continguts d'aquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials d'investigació i docència en els termes establerts a l'art. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix l'autorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No s'autoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes d'explotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des d'un lloc aliè al servei TDX. Tampoc s'autoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant als continguts de la tesi com als seus resums i índexs.

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