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Participation in school sport and post-school pathways: evidence from ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter D. Lunn  and
Elish Kelly
Elish Kelly*
Affiliation:
Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin
*
Corresponding author e-mail: Elish.Kelly@esri.ie
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Abstract

We examine the impact of participation in sport at secondary school on post-school pathways using a survey of Irish school-leavers, distinguishing between those who dropped out of sport during their secondary school years and those who continued playing in their final school years. We find that members of this latter group are, on completion of secondary schooling, significantly and substantially more likely to continue their education rather than to join the labour market. This effect survives controlling for individual background traits, school characteristics, attachment to the school and academic achievement. Our results are also robust to the use of propensity score matching to control for selection into participation in sport based on observable characteristics. We relate our findings to previous work on the potential labour market benefits of participation in sport and to the emerging literature on the role of consumption value in educational choice.

Keywords

sports participationlabour marketeducational choiceI21J01J24J40L83
Type
Research Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 232 , May 2015 , pp. R51 - R66
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Emer Smyth and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts, Selina McCoy for her assistance with the School Leavers' Survey, Seamus McGuinness for econometric advice, and the Irish Sports Council for supporting a research project on transitions in sports participation, which ultimately led us to investigate the present issue.

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