Search

The cumulative (dis)advantage hypothesis states that health disparities between education groups increase with age. The present study examined this hypothesis in a comparative analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. These countries offer sharp contrasts in the social conditions that may intensify or inhibit processes of cumulative (dis)advantage. Using harmonized panel data from the HRS, ELSA, and SHARE, the study applied Poisson multilevel regression models to trace changes in the number of chronic conditions and functional limitations of people aged 50-76 (N = 16,887 individuals; 71,154 observations). The four countries showed a clear gradient in levels of physical health and in the extent to which health trajectories were shaped by education. Across all ages and cohorts, health problems were most prevalent in the United States, less prevalent in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and least prevalent in Sweden. A similar cross-national gradient was found for the size of health gaps between education groups and for the extent to which these gaps widened with age. Gaps were largest in the United States, smaller in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands, and smallest in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational attainment is a key factor for understanding why some individuals migrate and others do not. Compulsory schooling laws, which determine an individual's minimum level of education, can potentially affect migration. We test whether and how increasing the length of compulsory schooling influences migration of affected cohorts across European countries, a context where labor mobility is essentially free. We construct a novel database that includes information for 31 European countries on compulsory education reforms passed between 1950 and 1990. Combining this data with information on recent migration flows by cohorts, we find that an additional year of compulsory education reduces the number of individuals from affected cohorts who migrate in a given year by 9 %. Our results rely on the exogeneity of compulsory schooling laws. A variety of empirical tests indicate that European legislators did not pass compulsory education reforms as a reaction to changes in emigration rates or educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although advanced education has been found to be consistently associated with a later transition to parenthood for women, findings about education and the transition to parenthood have been much less consistent for men, and no stylized fact has emerged from the literature. We argue that the inconsistency of findings for men is due to the fact that the selection process involved in union formation has been disregarded in earlier studies. We hypothesize that men's educational attainment consistently and positively affects the transition to fatherhood via higher rates of union formation. We apply multiprocess event-history analysis to data from the Generations and Gender Surveys for 10 European countries. Our results show indeed a consistent positive effect of education on the transition to fatherhood, but it operates chiefly through selection into union. Failing to account for this selection process leads to a major underestimation of the salience of education for the transition to fatherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing empirical evidence on the effects of birth order on wages does not distinguish between temporary and permanent effects. Using data from 11 European countries for males born between 1935 and 1956, we show that firstborns enjoy on average a 13.7% premium in their entry wage compared with later-borns. This advantage, however, is short-lived and disappears 10 years after labor market entry. Although firstborns start with a better job, partially because of their higher education, later-borns quickly catch up by switching earlier and more frequently to better-paying jobs. We argue that a key factor driving our findings is that later-borns have lower risk aversion than firstborns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies by Adelman and by Friedlander and Silver, which have investigated whether regression equations derived from cross-section data can be used to predict the impact of socioeconomic development on changing levels of fertility, are reviewed critically. Regression analyses based on data for 57 countries c. 1960 show that fertility (gross reproduction rate) varies cross-sectionally with region as well as with level of development (as measured by per capita income, percent labor force in primary sector, expectation of life, illiteracy rate). Using equations derived from the cross-section study and time-series data for five European countries during the period that their fertility rates fell, it is shown that predictions about past fertility changes are in error. The results suggest caution in the use of cross-section relations to predict the course of fertility in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of secondary education on cognitive performance toward the end of working age. We exploit the exogenous variation in years of schooling arising from compulsory schooling reforms implemented in six European countries during the 1950s and 1960s. Using data of individuals, approximately age 60, from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we assess the causal effect of education on memory, fluency, numeracy, and orientation-to-date. Furthermore, we study education effects on cognitive decline. We find a positive impact of schooling on memory scores. One year of education increases the memory score approximately four decades later by about 0.2, which amounts to 10 % of a standard deviation. Furthermore, we find some evidence for a protective effect of schooling on cognitive decline in terms of verbal fluency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]