Unpacking the relationship between child poverty rates and educational deprivation: The role of school social composition and public education spending

This study examines the relationship between societal child poverty and students’ risk of educational deprivation and explores the underlying mechanisms. Analyzing PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2018 data from 32 countries, we find a positive association that persists even after controlling for individual-level compositional differences. Public education spending, which is negatively associated with child poverty, partly explains this relationship; in other words, countries with higher child poverty rates do not offset the risk of educational deprivation through higher school funding. The main explanation, however, lies in school social composition: high-poverty countries have a larger number of schools with elevated shares of socially disadvantaged students, rather than a higher concentration of disadvantaged students in a few schools, as previous US research has assumed. Overall, our findings suggest that poverty at any level—individual, school, or national—harms children’s educational opportunities, and that schools alone cannot overcome educational deprivation.