Manuel T Valdés
Biographic Data
| ID | 207654 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Manuel T Valdés |
| GIVEN NAMES | Manuel T |
| FAMILY NAME | Valdés |
| SIGNATURE | VALDÉS M T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidad Complutense de Madrid |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8012-3956 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Is educational assortative mating passed down through generations? Evidence from Europe
Educational assortative mating can contribute to social closure and the intergenerational reproduction of inequality; a stratifying force that may intensify if mating behaviors are transmitted from parents to children. Despite its potential role in deepening social inequalities, however, the intergenerational transmission of educational assortative mating has been largely overlooked in empirical work. This study tests such transmission using micr…
Spatial Variation in the Educational Gradient of First Motherhood in Spain
Several studies have analyzed the relationship between educational attainment and fertility across countries, identifying significant differences. However, these works often overlook intra‐country variation, which may play an important role in moderating that relationship. This study examines the heterogeneity in the educational gradient of fertility across Spain, a context characterized by lowest‐low and latest‐late fertility. Using data from th…
The geography of tertiary education inequality in Europe
In this article we study differences in levels of educational inequality across European countries and regions. We address two research questions. First, we ask whether educational inequality in geographical Europe is shaped to a larger extent by the country or the region within the country where an individual resides. Second, we investigate whether convergence in levels of educational inequality has occurred across territorial units in Europe. S…
Can a low emission zone improve academic performance? Evidence from a natural experiment in the city of Madrid
In the last decades, various policies have been implemented to reduce air pollution exposure and improve public health outcomes. Among these, low emission zones (LEZs) have been shown to effectively enhance air quality and health outcomes. However, their potential positive externalities on other outcomes, such as academic performance, remain largely unexplored. This study examines the LEZ introduced in the city of Madrid in late 2018 and investig…
Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children
Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children’s academic achievement. We argue that this expansion reduces the selectivity of university attainment, making graduates progressively less selected on traits rele…
Month of Birth, Early Academic Achievement, and Parental Expectations of University Completion
Previous studies have shown that educational expectations of individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) are relatively unaffected by low academic performance, a phenomenon called 'sticky expectations.' However, this result might be biased by endogeneity and reverse causality between academic achievement and educational expectations. Using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from 11 countries with a strict sch…
Are Younger Students More Likely to Drop Out? Spanish Evidence on the Moderator Role of Gender and Social Origin
Early school leaving (ESL) is considered one of the most serious problems in the functioning of European education systems. In particular, Spain has traditionally exhibited one of the largest ESL rates in Europe. This study aimed to shed light on the role of the month of birth as a factor conditioning the probability of ESL. Using high‐quality census data and a regression discontinuity design, we documented that Spanish males from lower social st…
The effect of the age at school entry on educational attainment and field of study
In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers. It is also well-established that this effect peaks at the initial stages of the educational career an…
Efectos primarios y secundarios del origen social en la transición a la educación posobligatoria en España
La desigualdad observada en una decisión educativa puede descomponerse en el efecto que el origen social genera sobre el rendimiento académico (efecto primario) y sobre la propia toma de decisiones educativas (efecto secundario). Trabajos previos sobre la decisión de matriculación en la educación posobligatoria en España han estimado la importancia relativa de los efectos secundarios en tres cuartas partes de la desigualdad total. No obstante, el…
Month of Birth and Cognitive Effort
All around the world, school-entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar so that the age of students in the same cohort differs by up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent strand of research that has turned to investigate the RAE on non-academic outcomes such as personalit…
Intensity of educational expansion
Previous sociological research has indirectly examined the association between educational expansion and inequality by analysing changes in inequality over cohorts during the expansion process. This study tests the impact of educational expansion in Spain by using the proportion of people with a specific level of education in a particular region cohort as a direct measure of expansion. More importantly, this study focuses on the intensity of the …
The STEM leaky pipeline at labor market entry in Spain
The underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) majors is well documented. Using high-quality Spanish data, this study examines whether female STEM graduates are less likely to pursue STEM careers than their male counterparts and considers the moderating role of labor market conditions and social origin. We find a pronounced gender effect in initial and subsequent job placement (4–5 years after graduat…
Looking at the future from the periphery of the system
Extant research has observed that educational expectations are malleable and adjust in response to educational inputs such as the position in a stratified level of education. Examining two distinct forms of curricular differentiation introduced in the comprehensive Spanish educational system (low-ability grouping programmes), I study whether two identical 15-year-old students with the same academic performance would differ in their educational ex…
The effect of the month of birth on academic achievement
Students born in the days before the school-entry cutoff date are one year younger at school entry than their counterparts born in the days following the cutoff, which causes an achievement gap between the youngest and oldest students within each cohort. I assess this so-called relative age effect in the Spanish context, where the school-entry rule is strictly enforced. By means of a sharp Regression Discontinuity Design, I report a remarkable ef…
Understanding the stickiness in high-SES students' educational expectations
Different studies have observed that performance is a worse predictor of educational expectations among high-SES students. This result has been referred to as stickiness in high-SES students' expectations and explained as the outcome of the capacity and motivation of high-SES families to manage low performance so that it does not affect educational ambition and endanger social maintenance. However, little is known about how that stickiness is ach…
Date de référence pour l'entrée à l'école et calendrier des naissances
La date de référence du début de la scolarité des enfants peut inciter les parents à avancer ou à retarder la naissance lorsqu'elle s'approche de cette date. La recherche a mis en évidence cette pratique dans les pays asiatiques aux systèmes éducatifs très compétitifs. Notre analyse d'une base de données exhaustive constituée à partir de registres administratifs ne révèle aucune preuve de ce phénomène en Espagne. La stratification de l'échantillo…
The academic advantage of having university-educated parents decreases with the proportion of university-educated parents in a society
The academic advantage associated with having a university-educated parent may be intrinsic to that condition or depend on the proportion of university-educated parents in a society. If the latter, the expansion at university level will bring about a decrease in the average performance of children from university-educated families. I capitalize on the research opportunity that offers a late-expansion case such as Spain and assess how the academic…
Horizontal inequality in the transition to upper secondary education in Spain
Effectively maintained inequality theory posits that a reduction in vertical inequality following the expansion of a level of education will be compensated by an increase in horizontal inequality. Although this theory has been intensely studied in various countries, it has barely been explored in the Spanish case. To fill this gap, I use data from the Survey on the Transition from Education/Training to Labour Market Insertion and analyse the samp…
Unequal expectations? Testing decisional mechanisms for secondary effects of social origin
It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in…
Sticky educational expectations
This work studies the cross-country variability in the interaction effect between academic achievement and social origin on the configuration of the expectation of enrolment in the academic track of upper secondary education. Drawing on the Relative Risk Aversion Theory and the Compensatory Advantage model, we anticipate that academic achievement and social origin interact so that high-SES students’ expectations are irresponsive to low academic a…
Principales procedimientos metodológicos para el análisis de la composición de la desigualdad educativa
El estudio de la desigualdad educativa en España se ha visto dificultado por la carencia de información longitudinal sobre transiciones educativas. Como resultado, distintos procedimientos metodológicos habituales en el estudio de las desigualdades educativas en el ámbito internacional han sido escasamente desarrollados en el caso español, lo que contribuye a un importante desconocimiento de los mismos. El presente artículo pretende ofrecer una r…
Diferencias autonómicas en la composición de la desigualdad en la expectativa de matriculación universitaria
El crecimiento del nivel universitario en España ha sido muy intenso durante décadas. No obstante, las desigualdades en el acceso a la universidad han permanecido. La creación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior trajo consigo un renovado interés por abordar la dimensión social de la universidad, especialmente en lo tocante a la equidad en el acceso al nivel universitario. A partir de la oleada 2015 del estudio PISA, el presente trabajo pone…
Sticky educational expectations
This work studies the cross-country variability in the interaction effect between academic achievement and social origin on the configuration of the expectation of enrolment in the academic track of upper secondary education. Drawing on the Relative Risk Aversion Theory and the Compensatory Advantage model, we anticipate that academic achievement and social origin interact so that high-SES students’ expectations are irresponsive to low academic a…
Unequal expectations? Testing decisional mechanisms for secondary effects of social origin
It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in…
Efectos primarios y secundarios del origen social en la transición a la educación posobligatoria en España
La desigualdad observada en una decisión educativa puede descomponerse en el efecto que el origen social genera sobre el rendimiento académico (efecto primario) y sobre la propia toma de decisiones educativas (efecto secundario). Trabajos previos sobre la decisión de matriculación en la educación posobligatoria en España han estimado la importancia relativa de los efectos secundarios en tres cuartas partes de la desigualdad total. No obstante, el…
Understanding the stickiness in high-SES students' educational expectations
Different studies have observed that performance is a worse predictor of educational expectations among high-SES students. This result has been referred to as stickiness in high-SES students' expectations and explained as the outcome of the capacity and motivation of high-SES families to manage low performance so that it does not affect educational ambition and endanger social maintenance. However, little is known about how that stickiness is ach…
Can a low emission zone improve academic performance? Evidence from a natural experiment in the city of Madrid
In the last decades, various policies have been implemented to reduce air pollution exposure and improve public health outcomes. Among these, low emission zones (LEZs) have been shown to effectively enhance air quality and health outcomes. However, their potential positive externalities on other outcomes, such as academic performance, remain largely unexplored. This study examines the LEZ introduced in the city of Madrid in late 2018 and investig…
Month of Birth and Cognitive Effort
All around the world, school-entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar so that the age of students in the same cohort differs by up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent strand of research that has turned to investigate the RAE on non-academic outcomes such as personalit…
Intensity of educational expansion
Previous sociological research has indirectly examined the association between educational expansion and inequality by analysing changes in inequality over cohorts during the expansion process. This study tests the impact of educational expansion in Spain by using the proportion of people with a specific level of education in a particular region cohort as a direct measure of expansion. More importantly, this study focuses on the intensity of the …
The effect of the month of birth on academic achievement
Students born in the days before the school-entry cutoff date are one year younger at school entry than their counterparts born in the days following the cutoff, which causes an achievement gap between the youngest and oldest students within each cohort. I assess this so-called relative age effect in the Spanish context, where the school-entry rule is strictly enforced. By means of a sharp Regression Discontinuity Design, I report a remarkable ef…
Horizontal inequality in the transition to upper secondary education in Spain
Effectively maintained inequality theory posits that a reduction in vertical inequality following the expansion of a level of education will be compensated by an increase in horizontal inequality. Although this theory has been intensely studied in various countries, it has barely been explored in the Spanish case. To fill this gap, I use data from the Survey on the Transition from Education/Training to Labour Market Insertion and analyse the samp…
Diferencias autonómicas en la composición de la desigualdad en la expectativa de matriculación universitaria
El crecimiento del nivel universitario en España ha sido muy intenso durante décadas. No obstante, las desigualdades en el acceso a la universidad han permanecido. La creación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior trajo consigo un renovado interés por abordar la dimensión social de la universidad, especialmente en lo tocante a la equidad en el acceso al nivel universitario. A partir de la oleada 2015 del estudio PISA, el presente trabajo pone…
Principales procedimientos metodológicos para el análisis de la composición de la desigualdad educativa
El estudio de la desigualdad educativa en España se ha visto dificultado por la carencia de información longitudinal sobre transiciones educativas. Como resultado, distintos procedimientos metodológicos habituales en el estudio de las desigualdades educativas en el ámbito internacional han sido escasamente desarrollados en el caso español, lo que contribuye a un importante desconocimiento de los mismos. El presente artículo pretende ofrecer una r…
Sticky educational expectations
This work studies the cross-country variability in the interaction effect between academic achievement and social origin on the configuration of the expectation of enrolment in the academic track of upper secondary education. Drawing on the Relative Risk Aversion Theory and the Compensatory Advantage model, we anticipate that academic achievement and social origin interact so that high-SES students’ expectations are irresponsive to low academic a…
The academic advantage of having university-educated parents decreases with the proportion of university-educated parents in a society
The academic advantage associated with having a university-educated parent may be intrinsic to that condition or depend on the proportion of university-educated parents in a society. If the latter, the expansion at university level will bring about a decrease in the average performance of children from university-educated families. I capitalize on the research opportunity that offers a late-expansion case such as Spain and assess how the academic…
Horizontal inequality in the transition to upper secondary education in Spain
Effectively maintained inequality theory posits that a reduction in vertical inequality following the expansion of a level of education will be compensated by an increase in horizontal inequality. Although this theory has been intensely studied in various countries, it has barely been explored in the Spanish case. To fill this gap, I use data from the Survey on the Transition from Education/Training to Labour Market Insertion and analyse the samp…
Unequal expectations? Testing decisional mechanisms for secondary effects of social origin
It is a common research practice to decompose the effect of social origin on an educational expectation into a primary effect, via academic performance, and a secondary effect, computed as the inequality that survives the control of performance. In this paper, I examine how specific decisional mechanisms described in the Cultural Capital and Rational Action theories contribute to explain the inequalities that survive the control of performance in…
Looking at the future from the periphery of the system
Extant research has observed that educational expectations are malleable and adjust in response to educational inputs such as the position in a stratified level of education. Examining two distinct forms of curricular differentiation introduced in the comprehensive Spanish educational system (low-ability grouping programmes), I study whether two identical 15-year-old students with the same academic performance would differ in their educational ex…
The effect of the month of birth on academic achievement
Students born in the days before the school-entry cutoff date are one year younger at school entry than their counterparts born in the days following the cutoff, which causes an achievement gap between the youngest and oldest students within each cohort. I assess this so-called relative age effect in the Spanish context, where the school-entry rule is strictly enforced. By means of a sharp Regression Discontinuity Design, I report a remarkable ef…
Understanding the stickiness in high-SES students' educational expectations
Different studies have observed that performance is a worse predictor of educational expectations among high-SES students. This result has been referred to as stickiness in high-SES students' expectations and explained as the outcome of the capacity and motivation of high-SES families to manage low performance so that it does not affect educational ambition and endanger social maintenance. However, little is known about how that stickiness is ach…
Date de référence pour l'entrée à l'école et calendrier des naissances
La date de référence du début de la scolarité des enfants peut inciter les parents à avancer ou à retarder la naissance lorsqu'elle s'approche de cette date. La recherche a mis en évidence cette pratique dans les pays asiatiques aux systèmes éducatifs très compétitifs. Notre analyse d'une base de données exhaustive constituée à partir de registres administratifs ne révèle aucune preuve de ce phénomène en Espagne. La stratification de l'échantillo…
Are Younger Students More Likely to Drop Out? Spanish Evidence on the Moderator Role of Gender and Social Origin
Early school leaving (ESL) is considered one of the most serious problems in the functioning of European education systems. In particular, Spain has traditionally exhibited one of the largest ESL rates in Europe. This study aimed to shed light on the role of the month of birth as a factor conditioning the probability of ESL. Using high‐quality census data and a regression discontinuity design, we documented that Spanish males from lower social st…
The effect of the age at school entry on educational attainment and field of study
In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers. It is also well-established that this effect peaks at the initial stages of the educational career an…
Efectos primarios y secundarios del origen social en la transición a la educación posobligatoria en España
La desigualdad observada en una decisión educativa puede descomponerse en el efecto que el origen social genera sobre el rendimiento académico (efecto primario) y sobre la propia toma de decisiones educativas (efecto secundario). Trabajos previos sobre la decisión de matriculación en la educación posobligatoria en España han estimado la importancia relativa de los efectos secundarios en tres cuartas partes de la desigualdad total. No obstante, el…
Month of Birth and Cognitive Effort
All around the world, school-entry cohorts are organized on an annual calendar so that the age of students in the same cohort differs by up to one year. It is a well-established finding that this age gap entails a consequential (dis)advantage for academic performance referred to as the relative age effect (RAE). This study contributes to a recent strand of research that has turned to investigate the RAE on non-academic outcomes such as personalit…
Intensity of educational expansion
Previous sociological research has indirectly examined the association between educational expansion and inequality by analysing changes in inequality over cohorts during the expansion process. This study tests the impact of educational expansion in Spain by using the proportion of people with a specific level of education in a particular region cohort as a direct measure of expansion. More importantly, this study focuses on the intensity of the …
The STEM leaky pipeline at labor market entry in Spain
The underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) majors is well documented. Using high-quality Spanish data, this study examines whether female STEM graduates are less likely to pursue STEM careers than their male counterparts and considers the moderating role of labor market conditions and social origin. We find a pronounced gender effect in initial and subsequent job placement (4–5 years after graduat…
Spatial Variation in the Educational Gradient of First Motherhood in Spain
Several studies have analyzed the relationship between educational attainment and fertility across countries, identifying significant differences. However, these works often overlook intra‐country variation, which may play an important role in moderating that relationship. This study examines the heterogeneity in the educational gradient of fertility across Spain, a context characterized by lowest‐low and latest‐late fertility. Using data from th…
The geography of tertiary education inequality in Europe
In this article we study differences in levels of educational inequality across European countries and regions. We address two research questions. First, we ask whether educational inequality in geographical Europe is shaped to a larger extent by the country or the region within the country where an individual resides. Second, we investigate whether convergence in levels of educational inequality has occurred across territorial units in Europe. S…
Can a low emission zone improve academic performance? Evidence from a natural experiment in the city of Madrid
In the last decades, various policies have been implemented to reduce air pollution exposure and improve public health outcomes. Among these, low emission zones (LEZs) have been shown to effectively enhance air quality and health outcomes. However, their potential positive externalities on other outcomes, such as academic performance, remain largely unexplored. This study examines the LEZ introduced in the city of Madrid in late 2018 and investig…
Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children
Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children’s academic achievement. We argue that this expansion reduces the selectivity of university attainment, making graduates progressively less selected on traits rele…
Month of Birth, Early Academic Achievement, and Parental Expectations of University Completion
Previous studies have shown that educational expectations of individuals with high socioeconomic status (SES) are relatively unaffected by low academic performance, a phenomenon called 'sticky expectations.' However, this result might be biased by endogeneity and reverse causality between academic achievement and educational expectations. Using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from 11 countries with a strict sch…
Is educational assortative mating passed down through generations? Evidence from Europe
Educational assortative mating can contribute to social closure and the intergenerational reproduction of inequality; a stratifying force that may intensify if mating behaviors are transmitted from parents to children. Despite its potential role in deepening social inequalities, however, the intergenerational transmission of educational assortative mating has been largely overlooked in empirical work. This study tests such transmission using micr…
Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Demographic economics (8 works) · Demography (6 works) · Economic growth (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Educational attainment (5 works)