The Effect of Private Tutoring Expenditures on Academic Performance: Evidence from Middle School Students in South Korea

This paper examines the effect of private tutoring expenditures on academic performance of middle school students in South Korea, using data from “Analysis of the Level of School Education and Its Actual condition: Middle School”. In the face of endogeneity of private tutoring expenditures, the paper employs an instrumental variable (IV) method and a nonparametric bounding method. Using both methods we show that the true effect of private tutoring on middle school students remains at most modest in Korea. The IV results suggest that a 10 percent increase in tutoring expenditure for Korean, English and math raises a student’s test score of the subject at the largest by 1.24, 1.28, and 0.75 percent, respectively. The bounding results also fail to show evidence that an increase in tutoring expenditure leads to economically and statistically significant improvements in test score