Fabian Kosse

The Gap in Equality of Opportunity

Inequality of opportunity strikes when two children with the same abilities and academ-ic performance are sent to different quality schools because their parents differ in socio-economic status. Based on a novel dataset for Germany, Fabian Kosse has demonstrated that children are 23 percent less likely to enter the highest quality school type if their parents are poor and 36 percent less likely if the parents have a low-level education, even after conditioning on a rich set of ability and performance measures. He then provides causal evidence that a low-intensity mentoring programme can reduce inequality of opportunity and boost child education outcomes. Low socio-economic status elementary school children who were randomly assigned to a university student mentor for the duration of one year were 11 percentage points (20 percent) more likely to enter the highest quality school type in grade 5. The effect is particularly pronounced among children who grow up in poverty and seems to be driven by a change in parental deci-sion-making. If the programme sets in early enough, it closes more than one third of the over-all gap in education outcomes between high and low socio-economic status children. The equality of opportunity gap experienced by children from poor households disappears.

Fabian Kosse's main research interests are in Economics & Psychology (development and consequences of heterogeneities in skills, preferences, beliefs and personality) and in Applied Microeconometrics (applications in education, health and labour economics). While visiting CESifo, Mr Kosse will work on two projects: "(In)Equality of Opportunity, Mentoring and Critical Educational Decisions" and "Explaining College Drop-outs – Interactions of Socio-Economic Status, Skills and Gender".

Fabian Kosse is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Applied Microeconomics at the University of Bonn. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE). He previously studied Economics and Management at the University of Mannheim and the University of Miami. Mr Kosse is also an IZA Research Affiliate.