Playing the hand you’re dealt: The effects of family structure on children’s personality and the effects of educational policy on educational outcomes of migrant children

The first part of this dissertation investigates the influence of family structure on personality. It turns out that a larger age gap between brothers and sisters leads to the development of more negative personality traits in the second born child. For both boys and girls, having a sister results in the development of more positive personality traits.
The second part of this dissertation investigates two Dutch policy measures in primary school education and their impact on the school results of migrant children. With the introduction of the new policy, in which children take the standardised secondary school placement test after having received their teacher assessment (before 2014 this was the other way around), policymakers expected that placement in secondary education would better match the children's capacities. Especially for children with a migration background, more emphasis on teacher assessment would be useful, because they score relatively lower on the final test due to language barriers. However, the results show that the implementation of the policy has not yielded the expected positive results for migrant children. And placing refugee children in specialised schools does not lead to better performance than placement in regular elementary school.
Funded with a grant from the Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE)