Exposure to environmental burdens, such as air and noise pollution or a lack of green space, is linked to various adverse outcomes. Prior research shows that poor residents and foreign minorities in European cities often face disproportionate exposure to environmental burdens, yet substantial regional differences within countries remain poorly understood. We address this gap using fine-grained 1 km-by-1 km neighbourhood grid data on air and noise pollution and green space availability, combined with administrative information on poverty rates and the share of foreign minorities for all German cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants in 2017. We examine whether poor residents and foreign minorities experience higher environmental burdens, how patterns of environmental inequality vary across cities, and which contextual factors contribute to account for these differences. Our results indicate that foreign minorities are consistently more exposed to single and multiple environmental burdens, whereas poor residents generally are not. However, the magnitude of environmental inequality varies markedly across cities. The most important factor explaining this variation is the extent to which disadvantaged groups reside in central neighbourhoods, rather than levels of segregation or the overall supply of "clean and healthy" neighbourhoods. Finally, we consider how ongoing inner-city gentrification may shape environmental inequality. We find little to no environmental inequality in more gentrified cities-measured by a higher share of academics in the local labour force-while environmental disadvantages for foreign minorities remain substantial in less gentrified cities. (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic) 1 (sic)(sic) x 1 (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic) 2017 (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic) 10 (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic),(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)"(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)"(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)((sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic);(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), (sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic)(sic).

To effectively combat climate change it is crucial to encourage daily environmentally friendly behaviour across large parts of the population. This includes daily mobility behaviour, since private transport is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse emissions. Previous studies suggest that highly educated individuals exhibit more environmentally friendly mobility behaviour, a fact that is usually explained by their higher environmental awareness. We instead explore the extent to which this behaviour is driven by their socio-spatial advantages. We use comprehensive data on daily mobility: our analytical sample includes 16,419 journeys from 4168 individuals in 2002 and 102,774 journeys from 26,036 individuals in 2017. The data is representative of German residents in large cities aged 18 to 59. We employ multilevel OLS regression, logistic regression, and fractional multinomial logit models to analyse changes in travel patterns among highly educated individuals over time. Our findings reveal that university graduates tend to reside not only more often in large cities but in the most central neighbourhoods within these areas, leading to shorter daily travel distances. Consequently, their daily journeys take less time and they are able to use slower, more sustainable mobility options when commuting, running errands, or engaging in leisure activities without incurring higher travel time costs than other groups. Our results highlight the importance of addressing residential inequalities as a key step in enabling a broader population to adopt sustainable lifestyles.

The impact of high school curriculum reforms on students’ major choices in higher education remains an underexplored field, despite their potential role in shaping workforce composition, economic development, and social mobility. This study addresses this gap by examining the varying emphasis on compulsory school subjects across German states. We focus on non‐core subjects that vary significantly in importance across states (civic education) or that are part of the curriculum in some states but not in others (economics and computer science). These subjects are increasingly recognized as essential for fostering democratic values, economic understanding, and digital literacy, which also shape students’ career aspirations and educational trajectories, ultimately contributing to a skilled workforce and potentially reducing the shortage of skilled labor. Using a novel dataset documenting state‐specific introduction of compulsory courses and instructional time from 1995 to 2018, we analyze their influence on major choice. This dataset is linked with German higher education register data to assess whether increased compulsory instruction time and the introduction of compulsory courses affect students’ subsequent major choices. For our analyses, we employed two‐way fixed effects models to examine whether changes in the curriculum led to changes in major choices. Our results indicate small but positive effects of additional compulsory hours in civic education and economics on related major choices. However, our findings for computer science courses remain inconclusive. These results, along with the methodological limitations identified, highlight the need for further research on the long‐term educational implications of school curriculum reforms.

Inequalities based on social origins heavily influence university access, shaping individuals’ careers and earning potential. While educational interventions in upper secondary schools have shown promise in supporting students from low social origins, their effects on gender disparities in university access remain less clear. This study investigates how social origins and gender intersect to affect university enrollment and whether counseling programs influence these patterns. Using data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Germany evaluating a counseling program, our analysis reveals two key results. First, students’ evaluations of higher education appear to be shaped by their social background and gender before high school graduation. Second, the counseling program altered these evaluations and enrollment rates in distinct ways depending on students’ social background and gender. Our findings contribute to research on social stratification by highlighting intersectional patterns in rational choice evaluations and university enrollment. We also demonstrate that counseling in Germany effectively reduces intersectional inequalities in enrollment, which particularly benefits women from low social origins.

Guidance counseling is well known to foster enrollment in higher education among students from low social origins in the United States and Canada. However, because students in these North American countries face obstacles that do not exist in many European countries, generalizing previous findings to the European context is difficult. Against this background, we use a randomized controlled trial to investigate guidance counseling in Germany. Our results reveal that individuals from low social origins are more likely to enroll in higher education due to the program. Furthermore, we find substantial effect heterogeneity across social origin groups. Due to the program, individuals from high social origins enroll less frequently in higher education and more frequently in vocational training. Based on these opposing effects across social origin groups, we find that the program reduces inequality in higher education enrollment by approximately 70 percent.

In recent years, Germany has taken in large numbers of immigrants. We look at the places where those migrants have settled in German cities. Our focus is on their socio-spatial distribution: To what extent is the social structure of neighbourhoods associated with the influx of migrants into those neighbourhoods? Our analysis draws on data on 86 large and medium-sized German cities with a total of 3770 neighbourhoods. Using linear (multi-level) regression models, we analyze the relation between the evolution of the proportion of foreigners in these neighbourhoods between 2014 and 2017 and the neighbourhoods' social structure in 2014. We find that the proportion of foreigners has increased much more strongly in the most socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods - especially in East Germany. A detailed examination of the individual cities reveals pronounced geographical disparities. The differences between the cities may be partially explained by vacancy rates and municipal tax revenues.

With the recognition of a right to school education in the German Federal Constitutional Court's decision "Bundesnotbremse II" in November 2021, not only jurisprudence, but also educational science and empirical educational research are called upon to face the discussion on the form, content, statements and implications of this new right, especially with regard to the guarantee dimension of the indispensable minimum standards of school education. A corresponding discourse has yet to take place. Against this background, this article aims to identify possible (theoretical and empirical) points of convergence between educational science and empirical educational research on the one hand and the decision and the new right to school education law on the other, by outlining the significance of the resolution, classifying empirical evidence on the concretization of the minimum standards with regard to their output and input dimension and, finally, giving a justice-theoretical perspective to the questions raised here.

Mit der im November 2021 erfolgten Anerkennung eines Rechts auf schulische Bildung im Bundesverfassungsgerichtsbeschluss „Bundesnotbremse II“ sind nicht nur Rechtswissenschaft, sondern auch die Bildungswissenschaften und die empirische Bildungsforschung aufgefordert, sich der Diskussion um Form, Inhalt, Aussagen und Implikationen dieses neuen Bildungsgrundrechts insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Gewährleistungsdimension des unverzichtbaren Mindeststandards schulischer Bildung zu stellen. Ein entsprechender Diskurs steht bis dato noch aus. Vor diesem Hintergrund zielt der vorliegende Beitrag darauf, mögliche (theoretische wie empirische) Konvergenzpunkte zwischen Bildungswissenschaft und empirischer Bildungsforschung einerseits sowie dem Beschluss bzw. dem neuen Bildungsgrundrecht andererseits aufzuzeigen, indem er die Bedeutung des Beschlusses skizziert, empirische Evidenz zur Konkretisierung des Mindeststandards hinsichtlich dessen Output- sowie Inputdimension exemplarisch darstellt und die hier aufgeworfenen Fragen schließlich gerechtigkeitstheoretisch einordnet.

In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist die Zahl außercurricularer Bildungsprogramme europaweit stark gestiegen. Der Einfluss solcher Interventionen auf den Bildungserfolg hängt stark davon ab, in welchem Ausmaß verschiedene Gruppen daran teilnehmen. Entsprechend untersuchen wir, ob ein ungünstiges Teilnahmemuster von besonders förderbedürftigen Schüler:innen in einem Beratungsprogramm, das auf die Förderung der Studienaufnahme zielt, zu beobachten ist und ob dieses Teilnahmemuster auf die Fremdselektion durch Lehrer:innen oder auf eine Selbstselektion der Schüler:innen zurückgeht. Die untersuchte Gruppe umfasst 528 Schüler:innen, die im Rahmen einer kontrolliert-randomisierten Studie zufällig der Programmgruppe zugeordnet worden sind. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass besonders förderbedürftige Schüler:innen mit niedriger Studienintention und niedrigen akademischen Leistungen deutlich seltener am Programm teilnehmen als die jeweiligen Vergleichsgruppen, wofür beide Arten der Selektion verantwortlich sind. Abschließend diskutieren wir mögliche Konsequenzen dieses Teilnahmemusters für das ungleichheitsreduzierende Potenzial des Programms.

Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit der sozial ungleichen Schulwahl von öffentlichen und privaten Grundschulen. Die Untersuchung der Privatschulwahl ist besonders relevant, weil private Schulen in Deutschland Kindern aller sozialen Schichten offen stehen müssen (Art. 7 Abs. 4 GG), sich aber ausgeprägte soziale Unterschiede beim Besuch privater (Grund)Schulen beobachten lassen. Ziel der Studie ist es, Erklärungen für diese ungleichen Schulbesuchsquoten zu liefern. Die verwendeten Daten entstammen einer Befragung von Eltern zukünftiger Erstklässler:innen in einer deutschen Großstadt (Erfurt). Theoretisch rekurriert dieser Beitrag auf das dreistufige Modell zur Schulwahl von Kristen (2005), das auf die sozial ungleiche Wahl von öffentlichen und privaten Schulen angewendet wurde. Gemäß dem Modell zeigt sich bei der ersten Stufe, dass viele Eltern mit niedrigerer Bildung Privatschulen nicht als Wahlalternativen wahrnehmen. Auf der zweiten Stufe zeigt sich, dass Eltern mit niedrigerer Bildung überdurchschnittlich häufig angeben, sich private Schulen nicht leisten zu können. Es gibt darüber hinaus unterschiedliche Ertragserwartungen der Eltern unterschiedlicher Bildungsniveaus im Hinblick auf die Qualität privater Schulen und bei den Schulwahlmotiven. Diese können aber die sozialen Unterschiede bei der Privatschulbewerbung auf Stufe 2 nur in geringem Maße aufklären. Auf der dritten Stufe zeigt sich, dass Akademikereltern sich häufiger erfolgreich bei einer privaten Schule bewerben als Nicht-Akademikereltern.

The number of extracurricular educational programs has risen in recent decades throughout Europe. The effect of such interventions depends on the extent to which different groups participate in the programs. Hence, we study whether we can observe the emergence of unfavorable participation patterns with regard to students in need of extra support in a college counseling program fostering college access and whether the unfavorable participation pattern results from selection by the teachers or from self-selection by the students. The investigated group includes 528 students who were randomly assigned to the treatment condition as part of a randomized controlled trial. Our results show that students in need of extra support (low college-going intentions and low academic achievement) are much less likely to participate in the program than the respective comparison groups, due to both forms of selection. We discuss possible consequences of this participation pattern on the program's effect on educational disparities.

Although residential sorting along socio-economic lines has increased in many cities across Europe, few studies have examined what drives changes in segregation over time. This study looks at the role of school choice expansion in shaping patterns of spatial inequality. We adopt a longitudinal perspective and investigate how the increasing availability of private primary schools is related to the dynamics of socio-economic segregation in German cities. Drawing on a uniquely compiled data set for the years 2005 to 2014 that includes 74 large and medium-sized cities with over 3500 districts, we estimate linear panel regression models with city fixed effects. The analyses show that an increase in the share of private primary schools is associated with a decrease in the segregation of poverty in West German cities but not in East German ones. The association in West Germany is particularly pronounced in local contexts characterised by growing rates of poor residents and growing proportions of young children. Results imply that school choice availability may promote residential integration and at the same time reinforce school segregation.

In diesem Beitrag plädieren wir für eine Verständigung zwischen verschiedenen Akteur*innen über methodische Standards bei der Evaluation von Schulentwicklungsprogrammen, die zur Reduzierung von Bildungsungleichheit eingesetzt werden. Ziel einer solchen Verständigung wäre es, geteiltes Wissen über methodische Fragen aufzubauen und eine breit akzeptierte Einigung darüber zu erreichen, welche Forschungsmethoden als sinnvoll und verlässlich für die Beurteilung von Schulentwicklungsprozessen gelten. Wir sind der Ansicht, dass ergänzend zu den bislang hauptsächlich durchgeführten Prozessevaluationen Wirkungsevaluationen, und hier insbesondere randomisiert-kontrollierte Studien, einen zentralen Baustein in der Bewertung von in der Schule angesiedelten Programmen darstellen sollten.

In this paper, we argue for an understanding among different actors about methodological standards in the evaluation of school development programs that are implemented to reduce educational inequality. The aim of such an understanding would be to build shared knowledge about methodological issues and to reach a broadly accepted consensus on which research methods are considered useful and reliable for evaluating school development processes. We believe that, in addition to the process evaluations that have mainly been conducted to date, impact evaluations, and in particular randomized controlled trials, should be a central component in the evaluation of school-based programs.

Gender segregation in higher education is considered one of the main drivers of persistent economic gender inequality. Yet, though there has been considerable research identifying and describing the underlying mechanisms that cause gendered educational choices in higher education, little is known about how gender segregation in higher education could be changed. Accordingly, this article aims to determine the potential of educational interventions during high school to foster gender desegregation in higher education. We focused on two different processes that contribute to gender segregation in majors among higher education graduates: first, the selection into specific majors and, second, the selection out of specific majors. We investigated whether an intensive counselling programme leads to more gender-atypical choices among high-school graduates and examined whether intensive counselling supports several indicators of students' persistence in gender-atypical majors. Based on data from an experimental study of a counselling programme for German high-school students (N = 625), we estimated the programme's effect with linear probability models and intention-to-treat analysis. Our results show that high-school graduates are more likely to choose a gender-atypical major if they have received intensive counselling. This applies more to men than to women. In addition, the programme improved some persistence indicators for students in gender-atypical majors. Although we found a significant programme effect only for perceived person-major fit and student satisfaction, the coefficients of all aspects of students' persistence show a trend indicating that the programme was beneficial for students in gender-atypical majors. As experimental studies can also be affected by various types of bias, we performed several robustness checks. All analyses indicated stable results. In conclusion, we suggest that intensive counselling programmes have the potential to reduce gender segregation in higher education. More students were motivated to choose a gender-atypical major, and different aspects of student persistence were supported by the programme for students in gender-atypical majors.

Despite the increases in women's educational attainment in recent decades, female labor market participation and labor market returns are still lower than those of their male counterparts. Among the main factors explaining this persistence of economic inequality is the persistently gendered nature of occupational expectations, which results in gender segregation of labor. In this paper, we describe how gender-specific adolescents' occupational expectations change over time (2006-2018) and how women's empowerment and cultural norms might influence gender-specific occupational expectations. Against the backdrop of the research on the gender-equality paradox and from a comparative perspective, we focus on national and institutional characteristics to investigate how individual and national factors explain gendered occupational expectations. We answer our research questions by applying a two-step multilevel model with fixed effects. For this, we used PISA data and merged them with state-level information from 26 European countries. We add to existing research by making three contributions. First, we describe the changes in occupational expectations over time within European countries by looking at the gender composition of the desired occupation and distinguishing three categories (gender-typical, gender-balanced, and gender-atypical). Second, we investigate the relationship between national characteristics and the evolution of gendered occupational expectations separately by gender to reveal gender-specific mechanisms. Third, by using data from two-time points, we explore which national-level changes lead to changes in students' occupational expectations. Our first descriptive results show that the patterns of how students' occupational expectations change over time differ remarkably between countries. In 2018 in some countries, students' occupational expectations became more segregated while in others the number of students with gender-balanced or gender-atypical expectations increased. Our fixed effects models show that women's empowerment and self-expression value explained variance over time. For example, women's empowerment measured via an increase in women's employment and participation in parliament led to less gender-typical occupational expectations among girls and boys. Similarly, a rise in self-expression values led to less gender-typical occupational expectations, again for both boys and girls. Remarkably, our results do not verify the gender-equality paradox for occupational expectations, as is the case in previous cross-sectional analyses.