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Title: Ordinal Estimation Of Income-Achievement Gaps
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Nielsen, Eric R.
Ordinal Estimation Of Income-Achievement Gaps
Working paper, Becker Friedman Institute Initiative, University of Chicago, April 2013
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: University of Chicago
Keyword(s): Academic Development; Achievement; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Family Income; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This paper develops ordinal methods to test for changes in the relative academic performance of youth from high-income and low-income households. Applied to the NLSY79 and NLSY97 surveys, these ordinal methods show that the difference in academic achievement between youth from high and low-income households narrowed substantially between 1980 and 1997. In contrast, methods relying on the cardinal comparability of test scores suggest that the gap did not change between these two surveys. The cardinal assumption is not necessary and leads to incorrect inference in this important, real-world setting.
Bibliography Citation
Nielsen, Eric R. "Ordinal Estimation Of Income-Achievement Gaps." Working paper, Becker Friedman Institute Initiative, University of Chicago, April 2013.