Overview
David Figlio is an economist and former Dean of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. His research focuses on education economics, school accountability, and the use of large-scale administrative data to study child development and school quality. He assembled the linked Florida administrative database (birth records, school records) that underlies multiple studies of early-childhood and educational outcomes.
Key Contributions / Features
- Florida administrative data infrastructure: Constructed a linked dataset connecting Florida birth certificates (1992–2002) to school administrative records including FCAT test scores (grades 3–8), suspensions, absences, kindergarten readiness assessments, and high school graduation records. This database is the foundation of the Autor et al. (2019) gender gap study and multiple related papers.
- Co-authored Autor, Figlio, Karbownik, Roth, and Wasserman (2019, AEJ Applied): Using linked Florida records on ~770,000 children, documented that family disadvantage disproportionately harms boys relative to girls, with the boy-girl gap in suspensions, absences, kindergarten readiness, and HS graduation all widening significantly at lower SES levels. Confirmed postnatal mechanism via fetal origins birthweight falsification test. See Gender Gap in Educational Outcomes.
- Effects of poor neonatal health on cognitive development (Figlio, Guryan, Karbownik, and Roth 2014, AER 104(12): 3921–3955): Linked Florida birth and school records to show that poor neonatal health — instrumented using twins and birth order — has lasting negative effects on children's test scores, controlling for family background. Established the neonatal-to-educational-outcomes pipeline in the same Florida data infrastructure.
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