New publication

Melting pot kindergarten: The effect of linguistic diversity in early education

by: Hendrik Jürges, Anna M. Makles, Arash Naghavi, Kerstin Schneider

in: Labour Economics (Labour Econ), Volume 75, April 2022, 102119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102119

Abstract:
Estimating the effect of linguistic diversity in kindergartens and schools on child development is challenging due to the endogeneity of the language spoken at home and self-selection. We employ an instrumental variables approach to address the former and accounted for self-selection by exploiting the variation in linguistic diversity across cohorts within kindergartens. The estimated causal effects of linguistic diversity are heterogeneous: There is a small negative but statistically significant effect on the development of German children, which is mainly driven by a detrimental effect on the language skills of German speakers, but there is no effect on non-German speakers.

Related Project: Segregation and peer effects