ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION

Lyliana Elizabeth Gayoso de Ervin

Language likely plays an important role in schooling decisions and educational outcomes. If a mismatch between the language of instruction and students' mother tongue exists, then low academic performance, early departure from school, and low levels of educational attainment may arise. Yet, the impact of language of instruction on schooling decisions is not well understood. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate schooling decisions of individuals with different linguistic backgrounds, focusing on the case of Paraguay. In the first essay, I evaluate the effects of a mandatory schooling policy on the language-based educational gap that exists between Spanish and Guaraní speakers. Combining differences in the exposure to the policy with differences across language spoken, the Difference-in-Differences results suggest an increase in years of education of Guaraní speakers in the range of 0.26 to 0.59 years, relative to Spanish speakers. These results are robust to several empirical specifications, and indicate a reduction of the language-based educational gap associated with the implementation of the new policy. In the second essay, I investigate the determinants of test score gaps between Guaraní and Spanish speaking students in 3rd and 6th grade. The results suggest that the gaps in Reading (Spanish) and Mathematics test scores persist significantly after controlling for a rich set of covariates. The findings obtained by applying the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method suggest that an important portion of the gap is due to differences in unobserved characteristics, such as language barriers. Furthermore, the examination of the gaps by teacher's language reveals that language barriers may affect academic performance in the early years of primary school, in particular in reading skills. In the third essay, I use survival analysis techniques to identify factors affecting primary school drop out by Guaraní, Spanish, and bilingual speaking students. The results indicate that language-disadvantaged students, the Guaraní speakers, are more likely to drop out at any grade after second grade, and the risk of dropping out is highest after sixth grade. The overall findings of this dissertation reveal that language plays an important role in educational outcomes.

ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION

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