Health status and schooling decisions of young men

This paper considers the impact of health status on schooling attainment and earnings of young men. Using the National Longitudinal Surveys of Male Youth (aged 19–29 in 1971), we find a statistically significant negative relationship between years of schooling and health status. Those with the most severe health problems obtain almost 2.4 fewer years of schooling than their healthy counterparts. This loss represents about 20% of mean schooling for the entire sample. Also, hourly earnings are reduced by approximately 17% directly and indirectly (via schooling reductions) by health problems.     

Earnings and the decision to return to school

This paper finds that a significant predictor of returning to school is earnings below expected earnings in the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) Young Men sample. These 'unlucky' workers find that the foregone cost of schooling was lower than they thought. At the same time, the low relative earnings of these ‘unlucky’ workers may cause them also to revise their expected value of further schooling. But because they do actually decide to return to school, two interpretations of this revision in the value in further schooling are possible. Either the revision is upward, indicating that they believe that additional schooling will bring earnings up to that expected for persons with further education; or the revision is downward, but that revision must be dominated by a greater reduction in the expected cost of schooling for an economically sensible decision to return to school.     

Smoking, discount rates, and returns to education

Individual time preference determines schooling enrolment. Moreover, smoking behavior in early ages has been shown to be highly related to time preference rates. Insofar as discount rates are uncorrelated to ability, predicting school enrolment by discount rates can get rid of the ability bias in an earnings regression. Accordingly, we use smoking at age 16 as an instrument for schooling. Doing this for Austrian cross-sectional data, we find no evidence of ability bias in a simple earnings regression; the results are more mixed if family background is also included.     

Private Returns to an University Education: An Instrumental Variables Approach

This article examines the determinants of the salaries that Spanish university graduates earn on the labor market. Different earnings equations are estimated that allow us to measure the economic returns to investment in human capital at the university level, demonstrating that: on the one hand, considering schooling to be an exogenous variable gives a downward bias to the estimations of the private rates of return to an university education; on the other hand, not taking into account the aspects of the demand-side of the labor market in the traditional Mincerian earnings function, even though schooling is considered as an endogenous variable, the rates of return estimated for an university education would be given an upward bias. The problem concerning the endogeneity of schooling has been corrected in this article by using the instrumental variables technique.     

The importance of examining cohort uniqueness in the formulation of human investment policies

It is shown in this paper that the same single-period structure in relationships among schooling, experience, and earnings can have sharply contrasting meanings for life-cycle patterns. One of the observations may refer to a static economy in which expanding education at the higher levels brings diminishing marginal effects on national income, declining internal rates of return to investments in schooling and little learning in the post-school years. Yet exactly the same single-year age crosssection structure could reflect quite the opposite situation, with rising marginal social returns over successive cohorts, rising internal rates of return to the investments in higher education, and rising contributions of experience to productivity. This is the scenario of a dynamic economy in which investments in post-school human resource formation and in other inputs complementary with the services of well-educated people keep pace with the expansion in schooling. The contrast is not one of poor versus rich societies but of static versus dynamic ones. Policy implications in the two situations would be very different despite their identity in a conventional benefit-cost accounting.     

Socioeconomic background,education, and labor force outcomes: evidence from a regional US sample

This paper examines the long-term association of family socioeconomic status (SES), educational, and labor force outcomes in a regional US longitudinal sample (N = 2264). The results offer insights into the mechanisms underlying the role of family SES in transitions from secondary schooling to early work experiences. It was found that the academic achievement gap associated with SES widens during secondary schooling due in part to course-level tracking. Family SES relates to college enrollment mainly via its association with academic gains in school, but also through family income and father’s occupational status. Family SES is weakly but significantly related to adult offspring’s earnings but more strongly related to occupational status. Educational qualifications and cognitive skills make independent contributions to the explanation of labor force outcomes.     

Quality of education and economic growth

This paper assesses the impact of school quality on student outcomes, particularly job performance, and subsequently on economic growth. It begins by showing that ‘investment in human capital’ has evolved from being viewed as simply an investment of student time to including interactions between time and monetary resources which may serve to improve school quality. Evidence is provided from studies of both elementary/secondary schooling and post-secondary education, and from studies of developed and less developed nations. It appears that school quality has substantially greater impact on changes in students' cognitive and behavioral outcomes in less developed than advanced countries. Yet school quality seems to effect lifetime earnings of all students regardless of the level of development of their nations. The paper explains why. in some cases, more years and money spent for schooling may not necessarily appear to reflect higher earnings. Explanations are provided for differences in the impact of school quality on student changes. A major one is the fact that there are significantly diminishing returns to expenditures on schooling, along with the fact that expenditure levels are so much lower in the poorer countries. Reasons are provided as to why, if institutional differences do not account for changes in students in wealthier nations, these differences should still account for differences in earnings. Factors such as measurement problems and institutional arrangements come into play in this regard. The paper concludes that improvement in the quality of schooling provided in developing countries may be more important tor the future economic prospects of these nations in the long run than will expanded access to poor quality education.     

The experience of school in Scotland, 1970s to 1990s

Reforms to secondary schooling in the 20th century are most commonly discussed in relation to structures—the extension of secondary education to all students in the first half of the century, and the ending of selection into different kinds of school after the 1960s. Yet reformers also sought to give students a more satisfactory experience of school. Understanding statistically the changing experience which students had of secondary school following the reforms of the 1960s requires a lengthy time series of survey data collected contemporaneously and the capacity to link that information to evidence on attainment and on demographic factors such as sex and socio-economic status. Data from a unique series of such surveys in Scotland is used to investigate whether secondary schools became more humane in this period, whether students were more engaged with their schooling, and whether they thought that schools prepared them for life after they left. The conclusions are that the long-term aspirations of reformers to make schooling more satisfactory for students were broadly achieved. There were indeed improvements of experience and sentiment of these kinds, and they extended to students at all levels of attainment, to both sexes, and to all levels of socio-economic status.     

Gender earnings differentials in the engineering profession in Greece

Engineers in Greece undergo a heavy schooling investment—five years of university study instead of the usual four. Greece is atypical in that women make up a relatively large portion of the engineering work force. Working women earn substantially less than do men and there is evidence of labor market discrimination. In this paper a recent survey (1987) of employed engineers is used to examine earnings differentials between men and women and to compare the results with an examination of the results of an earlier survey (1977). Results indicate that most of the difference in earnings between male and female engineers in Greece is not accounted for by differences in productive characteristics such as education and experience and, therefore, most of the difference may be due to discrimination. Moreover, the proportion of the earnings differential not explained by productivity has increased over time.This is a revised version of the paper presented at the 1991 Cambridge Social Stratification Research Seminar, Gender, Work and Pay, September 26–27, 1991. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to the World Bank.     

The effects of school quality on income

This paper uses a unique data set created by merging the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with school data from the Common Core of Data to examine the relationship between school expenditures and earnings. I find that school expenditures are related to earnings, and also positively affect the returns to schooling. This is particularly important given recent papers that have found no effect because this study is able to observe wages at later ages and is estimated for males and females. Robustness estimates find that if the sample were only observed at young ages, or estimated for white males, as has been done previously, the results would not hold. Therefore, it appears that even using an individual-level data set with students educated in this half of the century, school spending affects earnings.     

The impact of college timing on earnings

Adult students, those 25-yrs-old and over, currently constitute 43% of all college students. This paper investigates the importance of the timing of schooling in determining earnings. It is revealed that those who complete college at a later age receive a significantly smaller initial increase in earnings than those who acquire their education earlier in life. This result is important for both personal human capital investment decisions and policy makers.     

Why women are progressive in education? Gender disparities in human capital,labor markets,and family arrangement in the Philippines

This paper shows mutually consistent evidence to support female advantage in education and disadvantage in labor markets observed in the Philippines. We set up a model that shows multiple Nash equilibria to explain schooling and labor market behaviors for females and males. Our evidence from unique sibling data of schooling and work history and from the Philippine Labor Force Survey support that family arrangement to tighten commitment between daughters and parents keeps a high level of schooling investments in daughters. Because wage penalty to females in labor markets means that education is relatively important as a determinant of their earnings, parental investments in their daughters’ education has larger impacts on the income of their daughters than on their sons. Parents expect larger income shared from better-educated adult daughters. In contrast, males stay in an equilibrium, with low levels of schooling investment and income sharing. Our results also imply that the above institutional arrangement is stronger among poor families.     

Secondary Vocational Education and Earnings in Latin America[1]

ABSTRACT

Household survey data for II Latin American countries are used to assess earnings differentials by type of secondary education during the late 1980s. Introduction of the cost of the curriculum allows for the estimation of private and social rates of return to investment in education by type of secondary school curriculum. The paper documents mixed results. In some countries the private returns to vocational schooling are higher than the returns to general secondary schooling. Introducing differential cost of curriculum and estimating social returns to schooling results in much lower returns to vocational schooling.

     

Return to college education revisited: Is relevance relevant?

This study examines whether the size of the college earnings premium varies depending on the quality of the match between an individual's degree field and his/her occupation. The study uses the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to obtain a new measure of the quality of occupational match for a sample of 2268 young adults with post-secondary degrees from the restricted use High School and Beyond (1980/92) data. The study finds that people whose occupations better match their degree fields earn significantly higher returns to post-secondary schooling. This result is robust to controlling for an extensive set of pre-existing differences among individuals, and to accounting for differences in earnings across post-secondary degree fields.     

论“双元制”教育模式在贫困地区中职教育发展中的意义

在调研贫困地区中等职业教育办学模式的基础上,结合贫困地区中职教育的发展状况,总结了职业教育发展中的“校企合作”、“订单培养”及“双元制”办学模式的成功经验,提出了贫困地区“双元制”职业教育模式的必要性及重大意义。     

Unequal experience of COVID-induced remote schooling in four developing countries

Lockdown measures during the pandemic have resulted in school closure worldwide affecting nearly 9 out of 10 students. Consequently, remote schooling has become a growing phenomenon. However, due to a lack of infrastructural capacity and widespread poverty, the experience of remote learning in developing countries may have been unequal by pupils’ socioeconomic status, gender and location. This study draws evidence from a phone survey conducted by Young Lives (YL) in Ethiopia, two states of India, Peru and Vietnam enquiring which sociodemographic groups are benefiting more from remote schooling. Logit regression results suggest that students from wealthier households, urban areas and with internet access from all countries are more likely to experience remote schooling. Pupils from higher-educated households in all countries but Peru also tend to have alternative schooling. Additionally, apart from Peru, the gender difference in experiencing remote learning is not found significant. We suggest that access to remote learning resources for marginalised students would be paramount to reduce inequality in learning loss in the global South.     

Hazardous occupations, illness, and schooling

This initial study of the direct and indirect effects of schooling and direct effects of occupational hazards on health uses a recursive model involving choice of occupation that depends on schooling. Although the model represents only one possible conceptualization and the data on health are not the most desirable, evidence is found that occupational hazards have a strong influence on health independent of education and earnings. In addition, it is found that schooling has no direct effects on work hours lost due to illness and no indirect effects through choice of a safe job. The unimportance of schooling in affecting health may be partially explained by the limited sample which includes only blue-collar employees in very risky occupations.     

HUMAN CAPITAL AND THE LABOR OF LEARNING: A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

A bstract .  In this essay, Alexander Sidorkin offers a conceptual critique of the human capital theory that makes erroneous assumptions about the nature of student work and the private cost of schooling. Specifically, human capital theorists underestimate the private cost of schooling by taking low-level manual labor as the basis for estimating students' forgone earnings. This does not take into consideration the nature of students' labor of learning. In the essay, Sidorkin describes student work as a form of labor, not an investment activity, and considers the implications such an understanding of student work has for school reform.     

Comparing the payoff to vocational and academic credentials in Thailand over time

Using data from Thailand’s National Labor Force Survey, this paper analyzes the long-run earnings differentials for vocational and academic schooling at the secondary and post-secondary levels. The results show that vocational schooling offers consistently higher returns for men and women at the secondary and post-secondary levels. However, the returns to vocational and academic credentials vary substantially, both by gender and year. The primary conclusion that vocational schooling offers a higher private rate of return should be tempered by the understanding of the long-run decline in value of some vocational credentials and the potential growing importance of all post-secondary degrees.     

Why Brazil fell behind in college education?

Brazil fell behind in higher education attainment for the cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s. We jointly model educational choices, labor force participation and wages, and compute the average, marginal and internal rate of returns to schooling after controlling for changes in ability composition at all levels of education. We find very high returns to college, which indicate that the disappointing trend in higher education could reflect binding credit constraints, psychic costs or uncertainty about future earnings gains from schooling.