Investigation of the long-term causal effect of economic inequality on educational inequality based on longitudinal survey and experiments of parent-child pairs and international comparison Five-years project: 2016–2020 Projects

Income inequality and inequality of opportunity has become a major concern among developed countries. In Japan, eliminating child poverty and strong intergenerational correlation of economic status is considered one of the highest priorities. What education policies effectively enhance equality of opportunity? Japan has been left behind in an emerging international cooperation to answer this question since Japan has lacked a longitudinal survey that follows the same children from preschool age though adulthood with measures of cognitive and noncognitive ability and labor market outcomes in adulthood. We will investigate the long-term causal effect of economic inequality on educational inequality by expanding the Japan Child Panel Survey (JCPS) to include preschool children and adolescents, conducting experiments on parent-child pairs, and starting an international project that compares the effect of economic inequality on children.