Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement?

Abstract

Although previous research has shown that homework improves students’ academic achievement, the majority of these studies use data on students’ homework time from retrospective questionnaires, which may be less accurate than time-diary data. We use data from the combined Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the Transition to Adulthood Survey (TA) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the effects of time spent on homework while attending high school on two measures of academic achievement: high school GPA and college attendance by age 20. We find that homework time has positive effects on academic achievement for boys.

Keywords: Academic achievement, homework, GPA, human capital, education

JEL Classification: I2,J2