National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)

Tasks

How do competences develop over the life-cycle? What factors are essential for educational success? To what extent do institutions of the education system matter? These and other questions related to educational research are  examined and analysed by the National Educational Panel. The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) for the Federal Republic of Germany is conducted by an interdisciplinary network of excellence located at the Leibniz Institute for Education Tracks (LifBi e.V.) at the University of Bamberg.

The object of the National Educational Panel Study is to collect longitudinal data on the development of competences, educational processes and decisions as well as returns to education in a formal, non-formal and informal context over the entire life-span. The Ifo Center for the Economics of Education is a partner within the NEPS-network of excellence and responsible for the thematic area of returns to education. The NEPS data will be made available to the national and international scientific community in the form of an anonymous Scientific Use File. The data will offer rich analysis potential for various disciplines that examine education and training processes, like demographics, education, economics, psychology, and sociology and will create the basis for improved reporting and policy consulting in Germany.

Results

The ifo Center for the Economics of Education participated in the NEPS with co-responsibility for item development in the pillar of ‘returns to education across the life course’. The focus was on documenting educational careers and determinants of occupational choice for the teacher of the NEPS children and their lecture style in starting cohort 2, 3, and 4. For starting cohort 2 items newly developed items should capture teacher quality from students’ reports in the future. Family aspiration was another focus. The items capture students’ age preferences for founding a family and giving birth to the first child. These items enable the analysis of the relation between educational and fertility decisions. Since 2014, ifo administered items about financing higher education which ifo took over from ZEW, adopted them for starting cohort 4 and developed new items on re-paying student loans and credits. In 2016 the progress of all cohorts reached a point where the main focus of ifo, recording teacher characteristics for the school cohorts, has been repealed. This is also one reason why the involvement of ifo in the NEPS ended in December 2016.