Muravyev, A. and Talavera, O. (2014) Can state language policies distort students' demand for education? Journal of Comparative Economics. ISSN 0147-5967
Abstract
We exploit a recent natural experiment in Ukraine's school system to study how stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language affect linguistic minority students' demand for education. The reform obligated linguistic minority students to take a standardized school exit test in Ukrainian, thus denying them access to translated versions of the test. We study the implications of this reform for students in schools with Hungarian and Romanian/Moldovan languages of instruction. Using school-level data and employing difference-in-difference estimation techniques, we find that the reform resulted in a decline in the number of subjects taken by minority students. They particularly withdrew from linguistically-demanding subjects such as History and Biology, taking more Math instead. Given the implications for minority students' fields of future study, the reform may have affected their educational outcomes in a distortive way.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Comparative Economics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Language policy; Linguistic minorities; Education; Ukraine |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 10 Dec 2015 16:16 |
Last Modified: | 02 Feb 2018 01:38 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.006 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jce.2015.01.006 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:92705 |