🚨Now out in @J_HumanResource:

⛪️Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes?
Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education

w/ @BenjaminArold & @LarissaZierow

👉Religious education in school affects students’ adult lives

🔗

A🧵 1/6 jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/… Unique German setting:

🏫Religious education was compulsory in state schools: 1000 hours over school career (>4x physics)

Abolished in staggered reforms across states 1972-2004

Replaced by option to choose between religious education + non-denominational “ethics”
2/6

❓Why do the Nordics & Dutch speak English so much better than the Germans, Italians & French?

➡️New Working Paper:

Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills
w/ F. Baumeister & E. Hanushek



A🧵1/12 nber.org/papers/w33984 Developing English-language skills is a near necessity in today’s global economy🌐

Prior studies of language acquisition have focused on schools🏫

We show an overwhelming influence of historical national decisions about whether to subtitle or dub TV content📺
2/12

📢New paper in the Economic Journal @EJ_RES:

👉Differences in patience can account for substantial regional variation in educational achievement within countries

Data on Facebook interests allow us to derive regional measures of patience



A🧵 1/9 academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art… “Patience and Subnational Differences in Human Capital:
Regional Analysis with Facebook Interests”
w/ @EricHanushek, @KinneLavinia & P. Sancassani

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on time preferences
➡️New perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities
2/9

📢Neue ifo-Studie:

Ungleiche Bildungschancen:
Ein Blick in die Bundesländer

Starke Ungleichheit der Bildungschancen von Kindern mit verschiedenen familiären Hintergründen in ALLEN🇩🇪Bundesländern, aber auch deutliche Unterschiede.



Ein🧵
1/8 ifo.de/publikationen/…
Wir vergleichen die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Gymnasialbesuchs für

Kinder mit niedrigerem Hintergrund (weder Elternteil mit Abitur🧑‍🎓noch oberes Viertel der HH-Einkommen💰) mit der für

Kinder mit höherem Hintergrund (mind. ein Elternteil Abitur u/o oberes Einkommensviertel)
2/8

🚨 New Working Paper:

Religion and Growth

w/ @essobecker & @jaredcrubin

We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function—physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology—to frame the role of religion in economic growth.



🧵1/9 monash.edu/__data/assets/…
Our framework conceptualizes religion as a “deeper” determinant of growth inputs that shapes indiv prefs, societal norms + institutions.

Synthesizing a disjoint lit this way highlights aggregate effect of religion on growth + opens interesting directions for future research.
2/9

🚨At least ⅔ ‼️ of the world’s youth do not reach even basic skill levels

That’s the bottom line of our new paper:

“Global Universal Basic Skills:
Current Deficits and Implications for World Development”
w/ @sarages & @EricHanushek

Out @ NBER: nber.org/papers/w30566
A🧵1/10 Ensuring that all of the world’s youth have at least basic skills is a prime development goal by itself,

but reaching such a goal also has immense importance for inclusive & sustainable world development.

See @UN‘s @SDGoals #4: ensure quality education for all 2/10

📢Paper out in @EFPJournal

“Long-run Trends in the U.S. SES-Achievement Gap”
w/ @EricHanushek @jlight_ @Paul_E_Peterson+L. Talpey

👉Against current conventional wisdom, we find that the SES-achievement gap has FALLEN modestly over past 4 decades.

doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a…
A🧵1/5 Rising US inequality raises concerns about potentially widening gaps in educational achievement between children raised within families of high + low socio-economic status (SES).
2/5

📢New WP🚨
“Income Contingency and the Electorate’s Support for Tuition”
w/ Philipp @lergetporer

👉Experimentally replacing regular upfront by deferred income-contingent payments increases public support for tuition by 18 (!) perc. points.

A 🧵
1/7
👇
cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_… Paper shows that electorate’s preferences for using tuition to finance higher education🧑‍🎓strongly depend on design of payment scheme.
Deferred income-contingent scheme (🇦🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇳🇿): payments are due only after graduation and must be paid only if income exceeds certain threshold.
2/7

Just accepted at @EconomicaLSE:

“Does Ignorance of Economic Returns and Costs Explain the Educational Aspiration Gap?
Representative Evidence from Adults and Adolescents”
w/ P. @lergetporer & K. Werner

A thread (1/6)

(Spoiler: it’s “no”)

drive.google.com/file/d/1ET6GGo… In our representative German survey, 74% of university graduates, but only 36% of those w/o a univ degree favor a univ degree for their children.

Similarly, aspiration gap of 24 pp. between adolescents w/ and w/o univ-educated parents. (2/6)