Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores
- aResearch Department, Statistics Norway, 0033 Oslo, Norway; and
- bDepartment of Economics, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway
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Edited by Christopher S. Jencks, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved November 21, 2011 (received for review April 29, 2011)
Abstract
Although some scholars maintain that education has little effect on intelligence quotient (IQ) scores, others claim that IQ scores are indeed malleable, primarily through intervention in early childhood. The causal effect of education on IQ at later ages is often difficult to uncover because analyses based on observational data are plagued by problems of reverse causation and self-selection into further education. We exploit a reform that increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 9 y in Norway in the 1960s to estimate the effect of education on IQ. We find that this schooling reform, which primarily affected education in the middle teenage years, had a substantial effect on IQ scores measured at the age of 19 y.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tag{at}ssb.no.
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Author contributions: C.N.B. and T.A.G. designed research, performed research, contributed new reagents/analytic tools, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1106077109/-/DCSupplemental.
