A BEJEAP Contributions article.

Abstract

Using data on children whose parents lost their jobs during the post-communist transition of Hungary, we address the causal effect of unexpected long-term unemployment of parents on their children's educational achievement. We estimate the effect of the children's age at the time of their parents' job loss on their probability of dropping out of secondary school (an event that follows the parents' job loss by many years). The treatment is an additional year reared in a family with regularly employed parents, which can be interpreted as additional human capital investment. We provide bounding estimates to the causal effect. The estimated bounds are tight, they show a substantial effect, and the effect is significantly stronger for preschool age children than for older ones.

Submitted: June 21, 2007 · Accepted: December 12, 2007 · Published: January 3, 2008

Recommended Citation

Kertesi, Gabor and Kezdi, Gabor (2007) "Children of the Post-Communist Transition: Age at the Time of the Parents' Job Loss and Dropping Out of Secondary School," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 7 : Iss. 2 (Contributions), Article 8.
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol7/iss2/art8

Related Files

stata-workfiles.zip (923 kB)
Stata workfiles. One for data description, one with final estimation sample.