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Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish individuals born in the 1930s. We find that absence significantly reduces contemporaneous academic performance, final educational attainment and labor income throughout the life-cycle. The findings are consistent with a dynamic model of human capital formation, whereby absence causes small immediate learning losses which cumulate to larger human capital losses over time and lead to worse labor market performance.
Authors
Associate Director
Sarah is an Associate Director in the Education and Skills sector at the IFS, holding a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Martin Karlsson
Daniel A. Kamhöfer
Therese Nilsson
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2021.621
- Publisher
- Institute for Fiscal Studies
Suggested citation
Cattan, S et al. (2021). The short- and long-term effects of student absence: evidence from Sweden. London: Institute for Fiscal Studies. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/short-and-long-term-effects-student-absence-evidence-sweden-0 (accessed: 29 March 2024).
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