Seyfettin Gürsel, Gökçe Uysal-Kolaşin and Onur Altındağ
In this research note, we study the educational attainment gap between native speakers of Turkish and Kurdish in Turkey. We use the data collected by Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies for the Turkish Health and Demographic Survey conducted in 2003. We show that the educational attainment of the population whose mother tongue is Kurdish is very low compared to the population whose mother tongue is Turkish. Despite the fact that younger age groups have higher education levels regardless of the mother tongue, the educational attainment gap between two populations remains still very large. A significant improvement is observed between cohorts, however it occurs very slowly.
The large educational attainment gap between two populations is mostly due to the differences between the female populations. The educational attainment gap between male native speakers of Turkish and Kurdish has been shrinking over time, and is significantly reduced across cohorts. Yet, the education attainment gap between female populations is huge and barely changes across cohorts. One out of every three female native speakers of Kurdish neither graduates from primary school nor speaks Turkish. [1]
[1] Primary school or primary education refers to 5 years of schooling. The compulsory years of schooling in Turkey was 5 years until 1997, and 8 years thereafter. However, most of the individuals in the data set were not affected by this policy change.
doc. ResearchBrief049
pdf. ResearchBrief049