The impact of extracurricular education on socioeconomic mobility in Japan: an application of causal machine learning

2025/06/09 by Yang Qiang, Qiang, Yang
Social Sciences · #Diverse Education Studies and Reforms #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities #School Choice and Performance

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2506.07421

openalex publication_date 2025/06/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This paper explores the socioeconomic impacts of extracurricular education, specifically private tutoring, on social mobility in Japan. Using data from the 2015 National Survey on Social Stratification and Social Mobility (SSM), we employed a causal machine learning approach to evaluate this educational intervention on income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige. Our research suggests that while shadow education holds the potential for positive socioeconomic impacts, its benefits are undermined by the economic disparities among households, resulting in minimal overall improvement. This highlights the complex mechanisms between individual demographics and educational interventions, revealing promising machine learning applications in this field.

Citations

• Priority to unemployed immigrants? A causal machine learning evaluation of training in Belgium
• Estimating Treatment Effects with Causal Forests: An Application
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• DOES EDUCATION REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY? A META‐REGRESSION ANALYSIS
• High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects
• An Introduction to Propensity Score Methods for Reducing the Effects of Confounding in Observational Studies
• Is extracurricular participation associated with beneficial outcomes? Concurrent and longitudinal relations.
• Education and Income Inequality: New Evidence From Cross‐Country Data
• Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data—or tears: An application to educational enrollments in states of India
• Estimation of Regression Coefficients When Some Regressors are not Always Observed
• The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects

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