Research

We re-examine the effects of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s on family structures and children's outcomes. Drawing on the French experience, we show that the movement favored the advent of smaller families, where the mother works outside the home and where the risk of divorce is greater, but that the combination of these changes had little effect on the educational and occupational trajectories of the children who lived through them.

Over the past decade, many French middle-schools have transitioned from numerical to standards-based grading. This change aims to foster students' learning and well-being, by giving them more detailed feedback on the skills they have mastered and those they still need to develop, while also reducing comparison and competition among peers. However, this grading method may also dampen students' motivation and effort by sending them a less clear and concise message about their absolute and relative performance. As a result, the overall impact of this shift on learning remains uncertain. Using a staggered difference-in-differences strategy, this paper evaluates the effect of standards-based grading on French students' performance in middle school. Our results highlight a negative effect on performance at the national exam at the end of middle-school (DNB), not confounded by any change in teaching staff, class-size, nor in peers' socio-economic background. Drawing on self-collected survey data, we document adverse effects on student motivation, social well-being, and perceived parental support among disadvantaged students and low-achievers.