Francesca Borgonovi

Education, Alcohol Use and Abuse Among Young Adults in Britain

In this article we explore the relationship between education and alcohol consumption. We examine whether the probability of abusing alcohol differs across educational groups. We use data from the British Cohort Study, a longitudinal study of one weeks birth in Britain in 1970. We analysed data collected at age 34 (in 2004) and complement it with information gathered at previous sweeps. Measures of alcohol abuse include alcohol consumption above NHS guidelines, daily alcohol consumption and problem drinking. We found that higher educational attainment is associated with increased odds of daily alcohol consumption and problem drinking. The relationship is stronger for females than males. Individuals who achieved high educational test scores in childhood are at a significantly higher risk of abusing alcohol across all dimensions. Our results also suggest that educational qualifications and academic performance are associated with the probability of belonging to different typologies of alcohol consumers among women while this association is not present in the case of educational qualifications and is very weak in the case of academic performance among males.

A life-cycle approach to the analysis of the relationship between social capital and health in Britain

I examine to what extent social capital can promote individual well-being in the form of good physical and mental health. Our analysis is based on multiple waves of data from the National Child Development Survey and the British Cohort Study, two large cohort studies following the lives of children who were born in Britain in one particular week in 1958 and 1970. I use waves that are comparable across the surveys in childhood and adulthood to explore the association between aspects of social capital and several measures of health when adopting a life-cycle approach. The findings suggest that individuals with high levels of social capital generally fare better than individuals with lower levels of social capital and that such associations are robust to the inclusion of controls such as physical and mental health in childhood and circumstances of the family of origin.

Education and obesity in four OECD countries

An epidemic of obesity has been developing in virtually all OECD countries over the last 30 years. Existing evidence provides strong suggestions that such epidemic has affected certain social groups more than others. In particular, education appears to be associated with a lower likelihood of obesity, especially among women. A range of analyses of health survey data from Australia, Canada, England and Korea were undertaken with the aim of exploring the relationship between education and obesity. The findings of these analyses show a broadly linear relationship between the number of years spent in full-time education and the probability of obesity, with most educated individuals displaying lower rates of the condition (the only exception being men in Korea). This suggests that marginal returns to education, in terms of reduction in obesity rates, are approximately constant throughout the education spectrum. The findings obtained confirm that the education gradient in obesity is stronger in women than in men. Differences between genders are minor in Australia and Canada, more pronounced in England and major in Korea. The causal nature of the link between education and obesity has not yet been proven with certainty; however, using data from France we were able to ascertain that the direction of causality appears to run mostly from education to obesity, as the strength of the association is only minimally affected when accounting for reduced educational opportunities for those who are obese in young age. Most of the effect of education on obesity is direct. Small components of the overall effect of education on obesity are mediated by an improved socio-economic status linked to higher levels of education, and by a higher level of education of other family members, associated with an individual’s own level of education. The positive effect of education on obesity is likely to be determined by at least three factors: (a) greater access to health-related information and improved ability to handle such information; (b) clearer perception of the risks associated with lifestyle choices; and, (c) improved self-control and consistency of preferences over time. However, it is not just the absolute level of education achieved by an individual that matters, but also how such level of education compares with that of the individual’s peers. The higher the individual’s education relative to his or her peers’, the lower is the probability of the individual being obese.

The Math Anxiety-Performance Link: A Global Phenomenon

Demand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals is on the rise worldwide. To effectively meet this demand, many governments and private organizations have revamped STEM education and promoted training to enhance math and science skills among students and workers. Education and training programs typically focus on increasing individuals’ math and science knowledge. However, data from laboratory studies and large-scale international assessments suggest that fear or apprehension about math, math anxiety, should also be considered when trying to increase math achievement and, in turn, STEM career success. This article reviews findings that shed light on antecedents of math anxiety, the bidirectional math anxiety-performance relation, underlying mechanisms, and promising routes to mitigating the negative relation between math anxiety and math performance.

Education and Self-Reported Health: Evidence from 23 Countries on the Role of Years of Schooling, Cognitive Skills and Social Capital

We examine the contribution of human capital to health in 23 countries worldwide using the OECD Survey of Adult Skills, a unique large-scale international assessment of 16–65 year olds that contains information about self-reported health, schooling, cognitive skills and indicators of interpersonal trust, which represents the cognitive dimension of social capital. We identify cross-national differences in education, skill and social capital gradients in self-reported health and explore the interaction between human capital and social capital to examine if and where social capital is a mediator or a moderator of years of schooling and cognitive abilities. We find large education gaps in self-reported health across all countries in our sample and a strong positive relationship between self-reported health and both literacy and trust in the majority of countries. Education and skill gradients in self-reported health appear to be largest in the United States and smallest in Italy, France, Sweden and Finland. On average around 5.5% of both the schooling gap in self-reported health and the literacy gap in self-reported health can be explained by the higher levels of interpersonal trust that better educated/more skilled individuals have, although the mediating role of trust varies considerably across countries. We find no evidence of a moderation effect: the relationships between health and years of schooling and health and cognitive skills are similar among individuals with different levels of trust.

What Motivates High School Students to Want to Be Teachers? The Role of Salary, Working Conditions, and Societal Evaluations About Occupations in a Comparative Perspective

This study examines between-country differences in the degree to which teachers’ working conditions, salaries, and societal evaluations about desirable job characteristics are associated with students’ teaching career expectations. Three-level hierarchical generalized linear models are employed to analyze cross-national data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Results reveal that teacher salaries and societal evaluations about the importance of job responsibility and respect are positively associated with teaching career expectations, while working hours are negatively associated with teaching career expectations. Analyses further reveal that the association between salaries and career expectations and societal evaluations and career expectations differ among students with different mathematics skills. We conclude by discussing policy initiatives that can encourage students with strong quantitative abilities to consider a career in teaching.

Psychosocial Skills in Large-Scale Assessments: Trends, Challenges, and Policy Implications

In this chapter, we discuss the changing role of large-scale educational assessments, specifically their increased focus on measuring psychosocial skills in addition to student achievement. We present a schema that can serve as a helpful guide for distinguishing the different kinds of variables measured in large-scale assessments. In addition, historic and current trends on the shifting role of psychosocial skills in large-scale assessments are discussed, such as the increased focus on noncognitive student factors as additional outcomes and measures of constructs of their own interest. We also present examples of policies aimed at promoting psychosocial skills that have been or are currently being implemented in several countries around the globe. Finally, we review key challenges in measuring psychosocial skills in large-scale assessments and present three promising directions in improved measurement, namely, the introduction of new item formats, improved questionnaire pretesting processes, and new questionnaire designs for digital environments. A shared goal of these innovations is increasing validity and subgroup comparability under the constraint of keeping student burden low. Policy interest is shifting from monitoring student literacy in core subjects to promoting lifelong learners who are able as well as eager to face the demands and challenges of a truly global society. We illustrate the important role that the outlined new directions in noncognitive measurement will play to help ensure that large-scale assessments continue to play a vital role in global education.

Japan needs gender equality

Last month, Tokyo Medical University (TMU) announced Yukiko Hayashi as its first female president. This comes on the heels of discovering that the insitution had manipulated entrance exam scores for many years to curb female enrollment. Hayashi may be an attempt by TMU to restore its reputation, but the scandal should be a wake-up call for Japanese society to ensure that men and women have equal opportunities to succeed.

Will the last be first and the first last? The role of classroom registers in cognitive skill acquisition

The paper estimates the effect of students’ position in the classroom register on their academic performance. We use a unique dataset from Poland which contains information on the academic outcomes of students in the humanities, science and mathematics lower secondary school exams as well as the position students occupy in their classroom register. We find that students whose names are recorded near the end of the class list have lower performance than those students whose names are recorded near the beginning of the list. The effect appears to be larger for performance in the humanities exam, and for low-achieving boys who attend large classes.

Seeing is believing: Task-exposure specificity and the development of mathematics self-efficacy evaluations.

We examine the relevance of task exposure specificity in the development of self-efficacy evaluations among 15-year-old students in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. We use data from the 2012 edition of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess if students’ self-efficacy evaluations with respect to a set of mathematics tasks are associated with how frequently they encountered those same tasks or tasks requiring them to apply similar processes or procedures. We find evidence of task exposure specificity in the development of self-efficacy evaluations toward both applied and pure mathematics problems. The relationship between task exposure and self-efficacy evaluations is not moderated by students’ socioeconomic status (SES) or anxiety toward mathematics. Exposure to easy items appears to be more strongly associated with the development of self-efficacy among high achieving students and exposure to pure mathematics problems is more strongly associated with the development of self-efficacy among girls.