Economic inequality and academic perseverance: Evidence from 73 countries

Academic perseverance is important for educational success, yet research has focused mainly on individual and proximal environmental factors, with limited attention to broader socioeconomic contexts.

This study examined whether national economic inequality was associated with students' academic perseverance and whether this association varied by family socioeconomic status (SES).

Data were drawn from four Programme for International Student Assessment cycles conducted in 2000, 2012, 2018 and 2022, comprising 1,374,393 15-year-old students from 73 countries.

Economic inequality was indexed using lagged national Gini coefficients. Country-level correlations and three-level weighted multilevel models were estimated, with students nested within schools and countries. Models adjusted for GDP per capita, population, unemployment, gender, age and immigrant background. Cross-level Gini × SES interactions tested moderation by family SES.

Economic inequality was moderately to strongly positively correlated with country-level mean academic perseverance across the four waves (r = .47-.61). In multilevel models, higher national inequality was also associated with higher individual-level academic perseverance after adjustment for covariates, explaining approximately 1% of the variance. The Gini × SES interaction was significant in three of the four waves: the positive association was approximately 1.5-1.8 times stronger among lower-SES students than among higher-SES students.

Economic inequality was associated with greater academic perseverance, particularly among lower-SES students. These findings suggest that its educational correlates may be more complex than uniformly negative accounts imply and warrant further research into the underlying mechanisms and longer-term consequences.