Disruptive events such as economic recessions, natural disasters, job loss, and divorce are highly prevalent among American families. These events can have a long-lasting impact when experienced during childhood, potentially altering academic achievement, socioemotional well-being, health and development, and later life socioeconomic status. Much…

Over the past 30 years, a shift occurred in higher education that saw more of the burden for paying for postsecondary education placed on students. Combined with rising tuition and fees, this has led students to take on increasing amounts of student debt. Despite the historic rise in student loans, surprisingly little attention has focused on…

College dropout proves to be a critical problem in undergraduate programs that directly affects students and the related community, due to direct economic losses and significant social costs. This article addresses a systematic review of the literature on predictors of student dropout intention in higher education, focusing on scientific…

Social scientists have developed numerous asset-based wealth indices to assess and target socioeconomic inequalities globally. However, there are no systematic studies of the relative performance of these different measures as proxies for socioeconomic position. In this study, we compare how five asset-based wealth indices--the International…

We combine phone-survey data from 2,200 students collected in July-August of 2020 with student-level administrative data from 54 schools in four northwestern provinces of Cambodia to investigate the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for grade 9 students. These students were particularly vulnerable to dropping out of school prematurely due to…

We administer a survey to study students' preferences for relative performance feedback in an introductory economics class. To do so, we elicit students' willingness to pay for/avoid learning their rank on a midterm exam. Our results show that 10% of students are willing to pay to avoid learning their rank. We also find that female students are…

Background: Evidence shows that children's household contexts of economic pressure and home chaos may better represent children's daily home experiences than family socioeconomic status. Still, limited research has examined the impacts of household contexts on child developmental outcomes and their underlying mechanisms. Objective: This study…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative contribution of socioeconomic status (SES) on three grammatical measures--finite verb morphology composite (FVMC), percent grammatical utterances (PGU), and clausal density--in children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. Method: Data for this study were from the normative sample in…

This paper explores student and school level factors associated with 15-year-old students' reading performance in five Southeast Asian (SEA) countries. It investigates predictors of reading performance, including student gender, economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS), social well-being, and experiences of bullying at the student level. It…

Research Findings: This study used a person-centered data analytic approach to identify distinct subgroups of early childhood educators (n= 133) based on their responses to multiple indicators of well-being (psychological, financial, and health indicators). Various fit indices established a two-class solution. Specifically, one group was…

This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first two address issues within the education system, focusing on strategies to attract and retain high-quality teachers in the public sector. The third chapter, a collaborative effort with Martin Martinez and Miguel Saldarriaga, explores the application of machine learning tools for nowcasting…

The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of economic capital, culture capital, social capital, social security, and living conditions on children's cognitive ability. However, most studies only focus on the impact of family socio-economic status/culture capital on children's cognitive ability by ordinary least squares regression…

The assessment of environmental identity (EID) in terms of connectedness to nature, eco-friendly behaviour (EFB) and closeness to nature variables is the central focus of this study. The elaborated conceptual model recommends that closeness to nature, connectedness to nature and EFBs related to education, economy and recycling are potential…

This study provides a comprehensive global snapshot of wealth-based inequalities in higher education attendance. We draw on data from 117 countries to describe cross-national patterns in higher education attendance rates, disaggregated by wealth quintile and country income group. We then calculate four different indicators to quantify the size of…

Higher education appropriations have been a widely studied topic by researchers and became more of a concern after the Great Recession. Assessing factors influencing appropriations to Research I institutions is of particular interest as they possess substantial enrollment capabilities but can create great inequities and access issues without state…