Causal Blocks

Do small towns really educate children better?

The ONS found that children in England's smaller towns do better at school. That is a correlation. Draw the causes and the story changes: the gap is about deprivation, and among towns equally deprived, larger ones come out ahead. Every estimate below is DoWhy run on 1,082 English towns.

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Try this
  1. Compare the total effect with the direct effect. The gap between them is deprivation.
  2. Click ONS: size alone. That is the correlation the ONS reported.
  3. Click Control for everything. The sign flips, and it gets reported as the effect of town size.