Institutional Features of Schooling Systems and Educational Inequality: Cross-Country Evidence From PIRLS and PISA*

Educational opportunities determine the intergenerational mobility of human capital and affect the distribution of earnings on the labour market. This paper aims at explaining cross-country differences in educational opportunities by features of schooling systems. The theoretical model predicts that a greater differentiation of the schooling system as indicated by streaming and a large share of private schools decreases educational opportunities while more instruction time increases educational opportunities. The empirical results that are based on a difference-in-differences estimation approach to control for country-specific effects support these hypotheses.