THE URBAN POOR IN SINGAPORE: EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES AND ASPIRATIONS

Abstract

Although the consequences of spatial segregation along socioeconomic lines have been widely documented, they have not been studied in Singapore. Using a novel dataset, this paper studies the impact of segregation on the educational outcomes and aspirations for children. I exploit the exogenous assignment of rental flat tenants to mitigate selection bias and find that children living in more segregated areas have significantly lower educational aspirations. Living in a more segregated area reduces the probability that the child aspires to higher education by 17.5% points, which is substantial relative to the baseline of 85%, after controlling for family and individual characteristics. The finding is robust to different model specifications, estimation method, and sample. It also performs relatively well to robustness checks for systematic bias.