Every Day Counts: Absenteeism and the Returns to Education
in High-Poverty Schools

(with Benjamin Goldman)

Why do students in high-poverty schools perform worse academically and in the labor market than their peers in low-poverty schools? We show that a key difference is how regularly students attend school. To estimate the effect of improving school-wide attendance, we construct a leave-out instrument based on neighboring schools, using transitory shocks to absences caused by factors like respiratory illnesses. We establish the validity of the instrument by showing that only shocks that occur before outcomes are measured have an impact on those outcomes. In high-poverty schools, we find that reducing absences from the 75th to the 25th percentile of the distribution would increase high school graduation rates by 2.3 percentage points and raise average earnings at age 25 by $3,600. Our results suggest that absenteeism may account for up to one-third of the achievement gap between high- and low-poverty schools. In the second part of our analysis, we further demonstrate that policies focused on improving attendance in high-poverty schools can reduce these outcome disparities. Nationwide adoption of “Communities in Schools,” the country’s largest student support program, could reduce the achievement gap by 20%, largely through its impact on attendance.

Who Marries Whom? The Role of Segregation by Race and Class

(with Benjamin Goldman and Sonya Porter)

Non-Technical Summary | County Level Marriage Patterns

Abstract

Americans rarely marry outside of their race or class group. We distinguish between two possible explanations: a lack of exposure to other groups versus a preference to marry within group. We develop an instrument for neighborhood exposure to opposite-sex members of other race and class groups using variation in sex ratios among nearby birth cohorts in childhood neighborhoods. We then test whether increased exposure results in more interracial (white-Black) and interclass (top-to-bottom parent income quartile) marriages. Increased exposure to opposite-sex members of other class groups generates a substantial increase in interclass marriage, but increased exposure to other race groups has no detectable effect on interracial marriage. We use these results to estimate a spatial model of the marriage market and quantify the impact of reducing residential segregation in general equilibrium. For small changes in exposure, the model implies effects in line with recent estimates from policy experiments. We then use the model to assess the overall contribution of segregation and find that residential segregation has large effects on interclass, but not interracial, marriage.

Can Individualized Student Supports Improve Economic Outcomes for Children in High Poverty Schools?

(with Benjamin Goldman and Sonya Porter)

Abstract

How can we improve outcomes for low-income students? We analyze the adult earnings impacts of the largest comprehensive student support program in the United States. Communities in Schools (CIS) places a “navigator” in high-poverty schools who provides an integrated system of supports to students, including academic (e.g., tutoring), economic (e.g., access to food assistance, housing), and mentoring. In 2023, CIS worked with 1.8 million students in 3,750 schools. Using later-treated CIS schools as a control, we estimate that four years of exposure to CIS generates a $1,500 (6% of control mean) increase in earnings at age 30. Effects are larger for students from low-income families and are driven by a reduction in non-employment and an increase in the probability of having a low-paying job. Each child exposed to four years of CIS is expected to pay an additional $9,000 in taxes between ages 18-65, which compares favorably to the direct cost of the program. Our results are relevant for the growing community school movement and illuminate a possible path for improving economic mobility in low opportunity neighborhoods.

Impact of CIS on Earnings in Adulthood