Withdrawn Advantage: How Advantaged Parents React to Perceived School Quality

Parental investments are key determinants of children’s educational outcomes, yet research on school inputs rarely considers how parents react to their children’s schooling. This study introduces the concept of Withdrawn Advantage, describing how advantaged parents reduce their own educational inputs when they perceive school quality as high. I examine this mechanism using class size as a salient signal of school quality. Using TIMSS-2015 data and exploiting maximum class size regulations across six European countries, I implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of class size. I find that only highly educated parents reduce their engagement in children’s homework when classes are smaller, while less educated parents make no change. This occurs without any change in students’ achievement, teachers’ likelihood of assigning homework, or how frequently the child does homework. These findings suggest that equalizing effects of schools may partly reflect parental responses rather than purely in-school mechanisms.