The impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity: Evidence from linked panel data

We provide first evidence regarding the direct impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity. To do so, we rely on representative linked employer–employee panel data for Belgium covering the period 1999–2006. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant unobserved workplace characteristics, cohort effects and dynamics in the adjustment process of productivity, we find that: (i) a higher level of required education exerts a significantly positive influence on firm productivity, (ii) additional years of over-education (both among young and older workers) are beneficial for firm productivity, and (iii) additional years of under-education (among young workers) are detrimental for firm productivity.     

Migration,remittances and educational outcomes: The case of Haiti

This paper empirically investigates how migration and the receipt of remittances affect educational outcomes in Haiti. Based on a theoretical approach it tries to disentangle the effects of both phenomena that have mostly been jointly modeled in previous literature. The results suggest that remittances play an important role for poor households in alleviating budget constraints. Household wealth, captured via an asset index, is found to have a significant impact on education as well, supporting the idea that budget constraints play a crucial role in schooling decisions in Haiti.     

The medium term schooling and health effects of low birth weight: Evidence from siblings

Research has shown that low birth weight is linked to infant mortality as well as longer term outcomes. This paper examines the medium term outcomes that may link low birth weight to adult disadvantage using a national longitudinal sample with a large sample of siblings (Add Health). Results show strong effects on several educational outcomes, including early grade repetition, receipt of special education services, and reports of a learning disability. Results for longer term outcomes are suggestive, though less robust and small in magnitude. Overall, the results suggest that medium term educational disadvantages associated with low birth weight are not driven by family level unobservables and do not accumulate into large long-term disadvantage.     

The role of educational choice in occupational gender segregation: Evidence from Trinidad and Tobago

We analyse the role of educational choice on the degree of occupational segregation in Trinidad and Tobago during a period in which educational policies intent on equating gender opportunities in education were implemented. To this end we utilize waves of the Trinidad and Tobago labour force survey over the period 1991–2004. Our results show that while educational segregation has fallen substantially over our sample period, this has not translated into less occupational segregation. This suggests that the educational policy has not been sufficient to combat occupational segregation. However, results at a more disaggregated level show that experiences have been heterogeneous across educational and occupational groups.     

The effect of wage compression and alternative labor market opportunities on teacher quality in Venezuela

This paper examines the effect of teacher relative wages and teacher wage dispersion on high school graduates’ preferences for teaching majors in College. This approximation to teacher quality is appropriate in a country like Venezuela as opposed to the US since the rigidity of the tertiary school system significantly limits mobility between majors. I combine data from the national college entrance examination from 1984 to 2003 with labor market data from the household surveys to construct a panel of data for quintiles of the test score distribution and age groups by states. The results suggest that teacher wage premia and wage dispersion have little effect on the quality mix of applicants to teaching. Most students’ preference for teaching is unresponsive to wage levels relative to other occupations and to wage growth prospects within teaching. If wages have a positive effect on the performance of educational systems, this paper argues that it is unlikely to be through the selection of the most talented individuals.     

Are returns to education on the decline in Venezuela and does Mission Sucre have a role to play?

Anecdotal evidence points to a falling standard of living for the educated in Venezuela. During this same period, President Hugo Chávez implemented several education reforms. We focus on a major university education reform known as Mission Sucre and its potential impact on returns to university education. First, we show that returns to education decreased significantly in Venezuela from 2002 to 2008. Subsequently, we explore the impact of the program on non-program participants and provide evidence that a substantial part of the falling returns at the tertiary level can be linked to Mission Sucre. Our results suggest that the reform created a negative externality on students who did not participate in the program, leading to a 2.7 percentage point decline in returns to university education for non-Mission Sucre students in the 23–28 age cohort.     

Poisoning the mind: Arsenic contamination of drinking water wells and children's educational achievement in rural Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Prolonged drinking of such water risks development of diseases and therefore has implications for children's cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenic contamination of tubewells, the primary source of drinking water at home, on the learning outcome of school-going children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative data on secondary school children. We unambiguously find a negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics scores and arsenic-contaminated drinking tubewells at home, net of the child's socio-economic status, parental background and school specific unobserved correlates of learning. Similar correlations are found for an alternative measure of student achievement and subjective well-being (i.e. self-reported measure of life satisfaction), of the student. We conclude by discussing the policy implication of our findings in the context of the current debate over the adverse effect of arsenic poisoning on children.     

The effects of high school math curriculum on college attendance: Evidence from the NLSY97

Using a sample of youth who graduated from high school in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this paper examines the impact of high school math curriculum on the decision to go to college. Results that control for unobserved differences between students and their families suggest that a more rigorous high school math curriculum is associated with a higher probability of attending college and of attending a 4-year college. The household fixed effect results imply that students who take an advanced academic math curriculum in high school (algebra II or precalculus, trigonometry, or calculus) are about 17 percentage points more likely to go to college and 20 percentage points more likely to start college at a 4-year school by age 21 compared to those students whose highest math class was algebra I or geometry.     

The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the role of race,socioeconomic status,and gender in college admissions

This paper contributes to research on affirmative action by examining issues of equity in the context of racial quotas in Brazil. We study the experience of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. Based on university admissions data and a student survey conducted by the authors, we find evidence that race, socioeconomic status, and gender were considerable barriers to college attendance and achievement. For example, first-difference regressions involving pairs of siblings indicate that black identity and gender had a negative effect on entrance exam scores. Moreover, we compare displaced and displacing applicants and find that racial quotas helped promote equity to some extent. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of redistribution were highly limited, and the vast majority of Brazilians had little chance of attending college, suggesting that more still needs to be done.     

Cognitive skills among children in Senegal: Disentangling the roles of schooling and family background

We use unique data to estimate the determinants of cognitive ability among 14–17-year olds in Senegal. Unlike standard school-based samples, tests were administered to current students as well as to children no longer – or never – enrolled. Years of schooling strongly affects cognitive skills, but conditional on years of school, parental education and household wealth, as well as local public school quality, have surprisingly modest effects on test performance. Instead, family background primarily affects skills indirectly through its impacts on years of schooling. Therefore closing the schooling gaps between poor and wealthy children will also close most of the gap in cognitive skills between these groups.     

On the relationship between student tastes and motivations,higher education decisions,and annual earnings

We examine the degree to which measures of student tastes and motivations are associated with the outcomes of three important higher education decisions and subsequent annual earnings. Within a sample of nearly 9000 students from the Baccalaureate and Beyond, we find that these measures are correlated with college type, college major, and highest postgraduate degree earned in generally predictable ways. For instance, students claiming it important to be well-off financially are significantly more likely to attend top public universities and major in Business or Engineering while students claiming it important to live near family are significantly less likely to attend top quality private institutions and significantly more likely to major in education.     

Management by results: Student evaluation of faculty teaching and the mis-measurement of performance

Using data on 4 years of courses at American University, regression results show that actual grades have a significant, positive effect on student evaluations of teaching (SETs), controlling for expected grade and fixed effects for both faculty and courses, and for possible endogeneity. Implications are that the SET is a faulty measure of teaching quality and grades a faulty signal of future job performance. Students, faculty, and provost appear to be engaged in an individually rational but socially destructive game of grade inflation centered on the link between SETs and grades. When performance is hard to measure, pay-for-performance, embodied by the link between SETs and faculty pay, may have unintended adverse consequences.     

High Schools That Work and college preparedness: Measuring the model's impact on mathematics and science pipeline progression

The High Schools That Work school improvement initiative is the nation's largest comprehensive school reform model with over a thousand schools adopting its framework. The initiative's premise is that all students can meet the demands of a college preparatory curriculum if provided the right supports. Analyzing over a decade of data on student course taking and performance, we employ a rigorous comparative interrupted time series strategy to assess the extent to which HSTW meets its goal by increasing students’ successful progression through the mathematics and science pipelines. Each pipeline consists of three college preparatory courses: algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 in mathematics and biology plus two physical science courses in science. The results show no effect on pipeline progression for the average student and some evidence of increased gaps in course taking between more advantaged and disadvantaged students.     

The role of educational quality and quantity in the process of economic development

We develop a theory of human capital investment to study the effects of school quality on student choices of education, and to understand its effect on economic growth. In a dynamic general equilibrium closed economy, primary education is mandatory but there is an opportunity to continue to secondary education and beyond. High-quality education increases the returns to schooling, and hence the incentives to accumulate human capital. This is caused by two different channels: higher quality makes education accessible to more people (extensive margin), and once individuals decide to participate in higher education, higher-quality increases the investment made per individual (intensive margin). Furthermore, educational quality determines human capital composition and growth. Cross-country data evidence shows that the proposed channels are quantitatively important and that the effect of the quality and quantity of education on growth depends on the stage of development.     

School-year employment and academic performance of young adolescents

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the relationship between school-year employment and academic performance of young adolescents under age 16. Ordinary least squares estimates show a significant positive relationship between modest hours of school-year employment and grade point average. However, the inclusion of individual fixed effects diminishes the relationship substantially, suggesting that much of the positive correlation can be explained by individual heterogeneity. This interpretation of results is supported by the absence of evidence that school-year work affects school engagement or future-orientedness, the usual mechanisms through which work is hypothesized to produce positive schooling spillovers.     

Unequal education,poverty and low growth—A theoretical framework for rural education of China

This paper constructs an intertemporal substitution educational model based on endogenous growth theory and examines the rural education, farmer income and rural economic growth problems in China. It shows that the households originally with the same economic endowment but different education endowment take different growth routes, the income difference between low- and high-income families can be enlarged as they take different educational growth routes, and the low-income family has the chance to get into the “poverty trap”. In the mean time, urban and rural, developed and underdeveloped rural areas, as they take the different education growth routes the difference of economic growth tend to be expanded for the flow of high-quality labor and different industrialization, and they also have the risk of “poverty trap”. The key to solve this problem is the active public policies that promote the equal education, rational income and equilibrium development.     

Effects of Welfare Reform on Vocational Education and Training

Exploiting variation in welfare reform across states and over time and using relevant comparison groups, this study estimates the effects of welfare reform on an important source of human capital acquisition among women at risk for relying on welfare: vocational education and training. The results suggest that welfare reform reduced enrollment in full-time vocational education and had no significant effects on part-time vocational education or participation in other types of work-related courses, though there appears to be considerable heterogeneity across states with respect to the strictness of educational policy and the strength of work incentives under welfare reform. In addition, we find evidence of heterogeneous effects by prior educational attainment. We find no evidence that the previously observed negative effects of welfare reform on formal education (including college enrollment), which we replicated in this study, have been offset by increases in vocational education and training.     

Human capital background and the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in France

In this paper, we study the impact of parental human capital background on ethnic educational gaps between second-generation immigrants using a large data set conducted in France in 2003. Estimates from censored random effect ordered Probit regressions show that the skills of immigrants explain in the most part, the ethnic educational gap between their children. Fluency in French and the length of their parents’ stay in France also matter. The impact of the immigrants’ education on the educational attainment of their children further depends on their country of origin, their place of schooling, and their proficiency in French.     

Costs of attendance and the educational programs of first-time community college students

I use data from the State University of New York to examine whether changes in community college attendance costs yield different impacts on first-time enrollment in different community college programs. Evidence is strong that academic-program enrollment significantly and substantially decreases when 2-year tuition increases, but weaker that it increases when 4-year tuition increases. Occupational-program enrollment is less responsive to 2- and 4-year tuition changes, but more responsive to labor market conditions. These different responses translate into significant changes in the program composition of entering community college cohorts when the costs of attendance change.