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Testing for treatment effect heterogeneity: Educational reform, genetic endowments, and family background
Working paper   Open access

Testing for treatment effect heterogeneity: Educational reform, genetic endowments, and family background

Rafael Ahlskog, Jonathan Beauchamp, Aysu Okbay, Sven Oskarsson and Kevin Thom
SSRN
03/16/2024
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4758247
url
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4758247View
Open Access

Abstract

We study the heterogeneous effects of a Swedish educational reform that increased compulsory schooling from seven to nine years. Following a pre-registered Analysis Plan, we examine how the reform differentially affected 20 outcomes in various domains (educational, labor market, reproductive, substance use, and health) for individuals with different genetic endowments. To estimate the effects of the reform, we leverage the gradual roll-out of the reform with a differences-in-differences estimator that compares municipalities and birth cohorts before and after the reform. Among 105 pre-registered tests of heterogeneous effects of the reform as a function of genetic endowments (across outcomes, sexes, and family SES background), we find two significant interactions after correction for multiple hypothesis testing. One of these implies that, among females from high-SES families, the reform had a relatively larger effect on earnings for those with a lower genetic propensity for educational attainment. Our results suggest that sizeable heterogeneous effects of educational reforms may not be ubiquitous but do exist, and highlight how careful study designs with preregistration can help uncover them.

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