Work packages
The project takes an interdisciplinary approach, with methods drawn from both economic history, demography and history. The project will be organised around five work packages (WPs) which will each have its own research questions, aims, theoretical approach and methods.
WP 1: Scandinavian Education Database (1800-1950)
The database will consist of the following sources: (a) complete individual-level Scandinavian secondary school enrolment and graduate lists, (b) ca. 20 000 selected graduate cohorts’ biographies taken from Danish and Norwegian “technical school anniversary books” and “high school yearbooks”, (c) lists with individual exam grades (two per graduate; high school exam and tertiary education exam).
Second, the graduates will be linked to the population censuses in the Historical Population Register of Norway (HPR) and the Link Lives of Denmark. The censuses identify name, sex, date and place of birth, occupation, any household member’s relationship to head of household, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and education in 1950, of individuals residing in Norway and Denmark at the day when the enumeration took place. The WP will develop a permanent identifier between the Scandinavian education database and the respective historical population registers, so that any developments in each of the databases will be captured through updates taken on a yearly basis. Our main goal in WP1 will be to ensure a link between the biographies (graduates) to individuals in the population censuses. However, since the respective population registers include links to other vital events in a person’s life span, i.e., birth(s), marriages, migration, and deaths, we will define these as highly relevant bonuses for future research.
WP 2: Historical context of the graduate biographies and grade lists
The work will proceed in three steps; 1) Analysing the process of making the yearbooks and anniversary books; how was the information collected? How were the yearbooks made? 2) Testing reliability; to what extent can we rely on the information provided in the biographies? 3) Exploring the tradition; why did the graduate yearbook tradition develop, and why did it persist? The main goal of this working package is to provide insights into the extent to which we can rely on information provided in the biographies and better understand why the tradition of creating yearbooks existed and persisted for so long.
WP 3: Equal access
What were the requirements to be admitted to secondary (high school) and tertiary-level educational institutions before and after different reforms? Did educational attainment pass on from one generation to the next? Did this change as a result of the reforms?
The WP will relate to the methodology, historiography and literature concerning educational opportunity and educational mobility. We will identify formal access criteria to education across time and space by analysing (a) historical documentation from high schools, technical schools and universities and (b) literature and historical documentation, which will be used to map the educational reforms and formal requirements, such as fees, completion of primary school, grades, and admission exams needed for enrolment in public and private high schools, technical schools and universities in Denmark and Norway, and how these changed over time.
Second, this information will be used to identify the effects of the reforms on educational mobility. Here, we carry out an empirical analysis of access to education and educational mobility over multiple generations. Preliminary results, based on a pilot database for selected years, suggest that only 1 per cent of the graduates in 1888 had fathers classified as “worker”, and this share seems to have increased only slightly over the following decades (Ranestad 2019). The focus here will be on examining changes in equal access to education over time and identifying possible spatial patterns, particularly urban-rural differences. We will then be able to assess under which conditions the reforms were successful and which factors hindered equal access to education.
WP 4: Equal opportunities
Did advances in the accessibility of education also translate into higher occupational status? Did educated individuals with “elite” backgrounds have higher occupational status than educated individuals with “lower-class backgrounds”? If we find a gap, did it close over time or did it persist?
In this work package, we will conduct an empirical comparative analysis of the advantages of education by using variables concerning “education”, “academic achievements” (grades) and “careers” (in Scandinavia and abroad).
To assess whether education (and eventually what type of education) led to better jobs, and especially whether there was a difference between graduates from “lower-class” backgrounds vs. those from “elite” backgrounds, we will apply the HISCO and HISCLASS classification schemes. The educational database will allow us to compare (i) different graduates (from different disciplines) according to their wage (available in official statistics and business records) and class and (ii) graduates according to their social and family background (identified in WP3). One major problem with estimating the causal effect education has on later-life outcomes is ability bias. We can account for this in two ways: using detailed information on the grades of the students and by using variation in the timing of implementation across regions, which allows us to identify the effects the reforms had on occupational mobility.
WP 5: Persistence or change
Where and for whom did change NOT occur?
In this WP we will use the Educational database linked to the historical population registers for Norway and Denmark. This link gives us a unique opportunity to analyse individuals with an education versus those who did not have one. Thereby, we will be able to analyse where and for whom the educational reforms worked particularly well. And, more importantly, we will be able to analyse where and for whom they did NOT work. We will identify factors such as gender, geographical background (distance to school from birthplace), socio-economic background (parents’ (father’s) occupational background), ethnicity, and “family persistence” (i.e., parents’ and grandparents’ educational background) to provide an analysis of the vulnerable groups in, and outside of, the educational system. Thereby, we will be able to demonstrate who policymakers need to pay special attention to. Based on these findings, we will then explore the mechanisms and the process of change further. The census-linked databases also provide us with the unique opportunity to identify and compare siblings over several generations. We can thus look at correlations between siblings from families of different backgrounds. This possibility will especially be interesting when investigating the educational opportunities of girls. Adding siblings to the model, will allow us to answer questions such as: Are girls with brothers more likely to receive an education? Does the number of siblings and the gender or age composition of the siblings play a role? Are these effects dependent on the background of the parents? This also allows comparing siblings being exposed to different regulations.
References
Ranestad, K. (2019): “The long-term impacts of education and practice: What can we learn by following high school graduates from cradle to grave?”, unpublished paper presented at Workshop Historical Demography, Trondheim Dec 2-3.