Linkage among school performance, housing prices, and residential mobility

Abstract

Ensuring equal opportunity of quality basic education is critical for a sustainable society, but access to high-quality public education is limited by the place of residence and income level of the household, especially under rigid geographic school assignment. This paper identifies multilateral linkages among academic performance of elementary school, housing prices, and residential mobility in Seoul. A spatial simultaneous equation system is applied to address feedback simultaneity and spatial interactions between local housing market and residential mobility. The results show that school performance positively affects both housing prices and population in-migration, but the increase in housing prices discourages the residential move into affluent school districts. Based on the finding that discouraging effect of housing price premium on population in-migration outweighs the population inflow attracted by school performance, this paper suggests policies to reduce the inequality of educational achievements.