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This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of marriage market types based on the starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with educational programs: ambition types. We find a substantial increase in sorting by educational ambition over time, which explains more than 40% of increasing inequality since 1980. In contrast, sorting trends are flat with the commonly used level of education. Hence, the mapping between education and marriage-market types matters crucially for conclusions about the role of marital sorting in rising income inequality.

In this article, I evaluate whether educational attainment in Germany is stratified by parental wealth and at which transitions stratification emerges. I propose a four-stage model to capture the emergence of stratification in the German education system, which is characterized by early between-school tracking: (i) transition to the tracked secondary school, (ii) attended track in the last year of mandatory schooling, (iii) highest school-leaving certificate, and (iv) transition to vocational or tertiary education. Results suggest that stratification by parental wealth emerges at all four stages, and, therefore, accumulates over the stages. Children living in wealthy households are 20 per cent more likely to attend the highest track in fifth grade and to obtain the highest school-leaving certificate and are 40 per cent more likely to enroll in tertiary education compared to children at the bottom of the wealth distribution. Furthermore, parental wealth seems to be particularly effective in preventing negative outcomes like leaving school without a certificate or not finding a fully qualifying vocational training. Among those who do not obtain the formal requirements to enroll in tertiary education, those with wealthy parents are more likely to start dual vocational training.

Educational expansion and the closing of gender gaps in education are key objectives in national and international policy agendas. Monitoring progress towards these goals requires comparable data across countries and over time. The availability of international census and survey microdata allows for cross-national comparisons of education participation and completion. However, we lack systematic analyses of how trends vary across data sources and of the extent to which these data sources offer a consistent account of progress in education. In this paper, we examine coherence in estimates of educational attainment among women aged 25 to 29 in 75 countries across the three main repositories of international population microdata: IPUMS International, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). Coherence analysis of 535 census and survey observations from 1960 to 2017 shows high levels of consistency overall but also identifies observations misaligned with trends. Results provide practical information to the research community about the validity of comparative investigations using three important data sources for demographic studies. The data also serve as benchmarks for assessing the quality of education information obtained in data sources not included in our analysis and the trend alignment of future estimates.

I study the effects of the Future to Discover Project, a randomized experiment in which Canadian high school students were either invited to participate in career planning workshops or were made eligible for an $8,000 college grant. By matching the experimental data to post-secondary institution records and income tax files, I am able to examine the effects of the interventions on college enrollment, graduation, and earnings in adulthood. I show that the career education intervention greatly improved students' outcomes in the long run by improving academic matching. In contrast, the college grant had no long-term monetary benefits despite increasing college enrollment, which is consistent with classical models of human capital investment in the absence of credit constraints. My findings suggest that informational frictions and behavioral obstacles-rather than financial constraints-represent the primary barrier to four-year college enrollment faced by low-income students. And that they explain a large part of the gap in four-year college enrollment between high- and low-income students.

This chapter aims at assessing the Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) youth in Germany, where one finds a strong institutionalized apprenticeship system, a relatively high stratification of the educational system and a gendered vocational education and training system. The dependent variable is the occupational status at the age of 30 measured by the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status. The independent variables are the socio-economic background information and the NEET patterns or respectively the cumulative NEET length. Germany constitutes an interesting case when looking at the longitudinal patterns of youths who experience NEET periods, for several reasons. In international comparison, the connection between education system and the labour market in Germany is quite structured.

Many youth leave school early without an upper secondary education, impeding their chances in the labor market. Early school leavers come disproportionately from families with low parental education. In some countries, there are alternative routes to upper secondary qualifications as adults. Does adult attainment reduce initial social differences in educational attainment, or does it reinforce such differences? Norway is one of the countries where many attain upper secondary qualifications in adulthood. Using individual data from administrative registers, we follow five Norwegian birth cohorts (1973–1977) from age 20 to 40. We document that the association between parental education and upper secondary completion declines monotonically with age, ending at age 40 about 35% below that at age 20. We also document that the alternative routes to adult qualifications recruit students of different family backgrounds. In particular, adults who acquire vocational qualifications via the experience-based route come from families with lower education than other groups. Our evidence suggests that institutions that offer opportunities for certifying qualifications acquired at work mitigate social gradients, fostering more equal opportunities within the education system.

This study is concerned with the central issues of community service engagement (CSE) in 21st century democratic societies around the world. To examine the factors influencing postsecondary education attainment’s relationship to CSE, this study utilized data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries using ordinary least square (OLS) and two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methods, including various factors for each country’s individual and country levels. The results show that attainment in postsecondary education at the individual level and investment and enrollments in tertiary education both have an influence on increasing CSE in 18 OECD countries. The present study is expected to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between postsecondary education and CSE across the world.

The relevance of education for migrants’ integration in the labor market is well documented. However, the migration conditions of refugees and their educational resources are different from those of other migrants, as they must often interrupt their educational careers and cannot ensure the suitability of their educational degrees in the receiving country’s labor market. It is thus unclear which educational resources refugees have and to what extent these resources are relevant for their labor market integration. This paper examines (a) which educational resources Syrian refugees possess at their arrival in Germany and (b) how their educational resources relate to their labor market integration. We use data on Syrian refugees in Bavaria covering a comprehensive set of indicators for educational resources, including educational degrees and a test of respondents’ scientific knowledge. A large proportion (65%) of Syrian refugees report interrupted educational careers. Nevertheless, their educational degrees correspond to their scientific knowledge in a similar way as that observed in a German comparison sample. Educational resources are pivotal in explaining labor market placement. Notably, the scientific knowledge test is found to be a better predictor than educational degrees. We conclude that education and particularly the quality of education, as indicated by the scientific knowledge test, is a notable resource for refugees’ labor market integration. (DIPF/Orig.), Die Relevanz von Bildung für die Arbeitsmarktintegration von Migranten ist gut belegt. Die Migrationsbedingungen von Geflüchteten und ihre Bildungsressourcen weichen jedoch von denen anderer Migranten ab, da sie ihre Bildungslaufbahn häufig unterbrechen müssen und die Passung ihrer Abschlüsse für den Arbeitsmarkt des Ziellandes nicht sicherstellen können. Daher ist unklar, mit welchen Bildungsressourcen Geflüchtete ankommen und inwiefern diese Ressourcen ihre Arbeitsmarktintegration begünstigen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht (a) welche Bildungsressourcen syrische Geflüchtete bei ihrer Ankunft in Deutschland besitzen und (b) wie diese Ressourcen mit ihrer Arbeitsmarktintegration zusammenhängen. Als Datengrundlage dienen Angaben syrischer Geflüchteter in Bayern, für die ein umfangreiches Set an Bildungsindikatoren erhoben wurde, unter anderem Bildungsabschlüsse und ein Test naturwissenschaftlichen Wissens. Ein großer Anteil (65%) der Befragten berichtet, ihre Bildungslaufbahn unterbrochen zu haben. Trotzdem sind ihre Bildungsabschlüsse mit dem naturwissenschaftlichen Wissen in ähnlicher Weise assoziiert wie in einer deutschen Vergleichsstichprobe. Multivariate Analysen zeigen zudem, dass Bildungsressourcen auch für Geflüchtete zentral für die Arbeitsmarktplatzierung sind. Beachtenswert ist dabei, dass das naturwissenschaftliche Wissen ein besserer Prädiktor ist als die Bildungsabschlüsse. Folglich stellt Bildung und insbesondere deren Qualität, wie durch den naturwissenschaftlichen Wissenstest indiziert, eine wichtige Ressource für die Arbeitsmarktintegration Geflüchteter dar. (DIPF/Orig.)

Occupational closure continuously establishes, contests, or reinforces institutional boundaries around occupations. Occupational closure thereby interferes with wage-setting processes in the labor market. Recent research shows a substantial impact of occupational closure on wage determination processes in Germany. However, research on occupational closure is based on the assumption that all incumbents of an occupation benefit in the same way. We challenge this assumption by showing that occupational closure works differently for different workers. Using the 2006 sample of the German Structure of Earnings Survey, we distinguish nine worker profiles (three educational groups crossed with three career stages). For each of these profiles we investigate the effects of five closure sources (credentialism, standardization, licensure, representation by occupational associations, and unionization) on the expected mean wages of occupations, employing a two-step multilevel regression model. Our results show that occupational closure does indeed differ between workers. We can show that closure plays out differently throughout employees’ careers. For example, representation through occupational associations pays off the most as employees’ careers advance. Closure sources are unequally distributed across occupations and benefit employees with tertiary degrees more than employees with vocational qualifications. Credentialism also yields the largest advantages for workers with tertiary degrees regarding wage rents. However, our analyses also point to complex interactions between credentialism and standardization, demanding further research, to investigate the interplay between individual worker characteristics and the various sources of occupational closure., Berufliche Schließung etabliert, verändert und verstärkt institutionelle Barrieren, die den Zugang zu Berufen regeln. Damit beeinflusst berufliche Schließung auch den Prozess der Lohndeterminierung im Arbeitsmarkt, wie jüngere Studien auch für Deutschland mehrfach nachgewiesen haben. Allerdings geht diese Forschung in der Regel von der Annahme aus, dass berufliche Schließung alle Inhaber eines Berufs in der gleichen Weise bevor- oder benachteiligt. Im Gegensatz dazu zeigt dieser Aufsatz, dass sich berufliche Schließung für verschiedene Arbeitnehmergruppen in unterschiedlicher Weise auswirkt. Mit den Daten der Verdienststrukturerhebung 2006 unterscheiden wir neun Arbeitnehmerprofile (drei Bildungsgruppen in drei unterschiedlichen Karrierestufen), für die wir jeweils mittels eines zweistufigen Multilevelregressionsmodells den Effekt von fünf Schließungsmechanismen (Credentialismus, Standardisierung, Lizensierung, Repräsentation durch Berufsverbände und Repräsentation durch Berufsgewerkschaften) auf die mittleren Löhne in den Berufen untersuchen. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich die Effekte beruflicher Schließung in der Tat zwischen Arbeitnehmergruppen unterscheiden. Wir können zeigen, dass sich Schließungseffekte zwischen Karrierestufen unterscheiden. Beispielsweise zahlt sich die Repräsentation durch Berufsverbände besonders für Arbeitnehmer in späteren Karrierestufen aus. Die Quellen der beruflichen Schließung sind zwischen Berufen ungleich verteilt und bevorteilen Arbeitnehmer mit tertiären Bildungsabschlüssen stärker als Arbeitnehmer mit beruflichen Bildungsabschlüssen. Credentialismus verhilft vor allem den Arbeitnehmern mit tertiären Abschlüssen zu Einkommensvorteilen. Allerdings weisen unsere Analysen auch auf komplexe Interaktionen zwischen Credentialismus und Standardisierung hin, die weitere Untersuchungen erfordern, welche das Zusammenspiel von individuellen Arbeitnehmercharakteristiken und den unterschiedlichen Quellen beruflicher Schließung offen legen.

While the association between parental separation and children’s lower educational achievements is a robust finding, the evidence regarding its heterogeneity across social groups is mixed. Some studies show that socioeconomically advantaged families manage to shelter their pupils from the consequences of parental break-up, while others find the opposite. We contribute to this debate and sketch a structural theory of the heterogeneity of the consequences associated to parental separation on children’s educational outcomes. We argue that the separation penalty and its heterogeneity across social backgrounds differ depending on the selectivity of a given educational outcome. In particular, the smallest penalty will be observed for very rare and very common outcomes. The rarity of an educational outcome depends on pupils’ social background, which might produce the observed heterogeneity even if the separation penalty itself is equal across parental social background. We investigate the heterogeneity of the consequences of separation by parents’ education in Spain on two children’s outcomes. One outcome (enrolment in tertiary education) is rare for children in low educated families, while the other (retaking in primary and secondary education) is rare for children in highly educated families. The results show that the penalty associated to parental separation for retaking a year in primary and secondary education is larger for children of low educated mothers. No heterogeneity is found for enrolment in tertiary education. Zusammenfassung Während der Zusammenhang zwischen elterlicher Trennung und geringeren Bildungserfolgen der Kinder als belastbares Forschungsergebnis gilt, ist die Evidenz bezüglich ihrer Heterogenität über die sozialen Gruppen hinweg uneinheitlich. Einige Studien zeigen auf, dass sozioökonomisch bessergestellte Familien es schaffen, ihre Kinder im Schulalter vor den Folgen elterlicher Trennung abzuschirmen, während andere Studien dies verneinen. Wir tragen zu dieser Debatte bei, indem wir eine Strukturtheorie der Heterogenität der mit der der elterlichen Trennung assoziierten Konsequenzen für den Bildungsergebnisse der Kinder skizzieren. Wir argumentieren, dass die Bildungseinbußen aufgrund der Trennung und deren Heterogenität über die sozialen Hintergründe hinweg in Abhängigkeit von der Selektivität des jeweiligen Bildungsergebnisses unterscheiden. Insbesondere gilt, dass die geringsten Einbußen für sehr seltene und für sehr verbreitete Ergebnisse beobachtet werden. Die Seltenheit eines Bildungsergebnisses hängt vom sozialen Hintergrund der Schüler ab, der wiederum die beobachtete Heterogenität hervorbringen könnte; dies selbst dann, wenn die Einbußen aufgrund der Trennung über den sozialen Hintergrund der Eltern hinweg gleich sind. Wir untersuchen die Heterogenität der Trennungsfolgen anhand der elterlichen Bildung für zwei Ergebnisse für Kinder in Spanien: Eines dieser Ergebnisse – Besuch einer Einrichtung des tertiären Bildungssektors – tritt für Kinder in Familien mit niedriger Bildung selten auf, während das andere – Klassenwiederholung im Primär- und Sekundärschulsektor – für Kinder aus höher gebildeten Familien selten ist. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Bildungseinbußen, die mit der elterlichen Trennung in Verbindung gebracht werden – das Sitzenbleiben in der Elementar- und Sekundarschule – für die Kinder von Müttern mit niedriger Bildung größer sind. Für den Besuch des tertiären Bildungssektors wurde keine Heterogenität gefunden., JFR - Journal of Family Research, Vol 31 No 1 (2019)

This paper presents some results of the research on ‘Adult education resources to reduce youth unemployment’, which is a part of the project ‘Implementation of the European agenda for adult learning’. The research applies a mixed-method approach (quantitative and qualitative data analysis). The purpose of the paper is to identify the most/least-efficient non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship and employability in Latvia as well as to show the relationship between the profile of young adults and their opinion on these methods, forms, and initiatives. The findings show that the young adults stressed the importance of cooperation with employers in organising educational activities, field trips as well as the necessity of having internships, projects, and meetings with entrepreneurs to learn from their experience. The most efficient non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship and employability in Latvia are as follows: internship in a company or institution, projects, other persons’ experience and success stories, and training enterprises. The least efficient ones are mentoring, business incubators, coaching, individual work/action plan for the young people, business clubs, and business start-up funds/grants. The opinion of young adults on all aspects of non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives depends on their profile (gender, education level, employment status, learning experience, etc.).

The comparable measurement of educational attainment is a challenge for all comparative surveys and cross-national data analyses. While education is an important predictor or control variable in many research contexts, it is particularly important when studying education and education-related outcomes such as skills or labor market chances. This study evaluates the cross-nationally comparable measurement of education in OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC, in terms of its construct validity when predicting general basic skills. In order to do so, the predictive power of country-specific (i.e. non-comparable) education variables is compared to the predictive power of different cross-nationally harmonized variables, namely the detailed ISCED-based coding scheme used in PIAAC, ISCED 2011 and 1997 levels, the broad education levels ‘low, medium, high’, ES-ISCED, as well as years of education. The analyses consist in sets of country-wise linear regressions, taking PIAAC’s plausible values and complex sampling into account, and use adjusted R2 as the indicator for predictive power and validity. The results show that while harmonization into a detailed coding scheme such as the most detailed comparable variable available in PIAAC does not entail large losses of information, the way this variable is further simplified plays a major role for validity. The paper also highlights shortcomings of the detailed variable from a theoretical point of view, such as the lack of differentiation of vocational and general education and other markers of educational content and quality, which are important aspects both for skill development as well as the labor market outcomes of education, and of the country-specific measures of education, which may make the detailed PIAAC education variable look better than it actually is. The Online Appendix is available in the section "Supplementary Files" on the right side., methods, data, analyses, Vol 12, No 1 (2018)

This paper is an update of a previous study by Treasury (Tumen et al, 2015). It assesses the impacts of post-school education on the labour market outcomes of young people who leave school without the NCEA level 2 qualification. Specifically, it estimates the effects of low-level tertiary study on the employment rates, benefit receipt rates and earnings of young people who left school without completing NCEA level 2 and then enrolled at a tertiary institution while they were aged 15–21. The benefits of the further education are measured by comparing the students' post-study outcomes with those of matched comparison groups of other young people who also left school without NCEA level 2 but did not undertake any tertiary education. The current study differs from the previous one in that we allow the students in our study population a longer time period in which to start and complete their tertiary study and track their outcomes for a greater number of years after completion. The findings are similar to the findings of the previous study. Just over half (51%) of those who enrolled in a level 1–4 certificate programme had achieved a qualification by the time they were 22 years of age. Three years after finishing, the students who completed a qualification were 9.1 percentage points more likely to be employed and 4.8 percentage points less likely to be receiving a benefit than their matched comparisons. Five years after finishing, they were 9.2 percentage points more likely to be employed and 5.9 percentage points less likely to be on a benefit than their matched comparisons. While completion of a tertiary qualification was associated with positive employment impacts, we find no evidence of positive impacts on participants' level of earnings, after controlling for their employment status. In addition, the employment benefits of tertiary study were confined to the students who completed a qualification and were not experienced by the 49% who did not.

National governments believe that higher levels of educational attainments and training are necessary for successful competition in knowledge-driven economies and all young people are urged to invest in their own human capital and learn new skills. Moves towards inclusive education have brought into mainstream schools and colleges many who would formerly have been segregated in special schooling or otherwise given minimum education, joining those simply regarded as lower attainers. More research is needed on what is happening to all these young people who do not do well in competitive education systems and uncertain job markets. This article is taken from a study which set out to discuss with school and college principals, local administrators, teachers and others, who they regard as lower attainers, what sort of education and training programmes are offered to the students, and what policies they think are in place to help young people into work or independent living. Discussions were held with respondents in England, Germany, the USA, Finland and Malta. The article takes Rawls' view that social injustice is mainly due to the inequitable distribution of economic and social resources and the State has a responsibility to ensure that all young people can participate in the economy and the society.

Worldwide, students' health and subjective well-being increasingly are regarded as important. One central noncognitive aspect that threatens students' well-being and that is related to students' socioeconomic background is whether they feel they belong to their social context (e.g., school) or instead feel socially ostracized. The present study investigated the relation between parents' education and students' sense of belonging to school and the role of students' and parents' attitudes toward school as mediators across different countries. The results indicate that students whose parents have a higher education level feel less socially excluded. As expected, students' attitude functions as a mediator: The more educated the students' parents, the more positive the students' attitudes toward school. Likewise, the more positive their attitude, the stronger they indicated a feeling of social belonging and the less they indicated feeling socially excluded. Further, more individualistic countries show a weaker effect. (DIPF/Orig.)

This study examines the impacts of post-school education on the labour market outcomes of young people who leave school with few qualifications. Specifically, it estimates the effects of tertiary study on the employment rates, benefit receipt rates and earnings of young people who left school without completing NCEA level 2, who enrolled at a tertiary institution while they were aged 16–19. The benefits of the further education are measured by comparing the students' post-study outcomes with those of matched comparison groups of other poorly qualified school leavers who did not undertake any tertiary education. We find that enrolling in a level 1–3 or level 4 certificate programme had a small positive impact on the employment of low-qualified school leavers, raising their employment rate by 3.4 percentage points on average, two years after they ceased studying. However, the benefits of tertiary study were confined to the 44% of students who completed a qualification and were not experienced by non-completers. Students who completed a level 1–3 certificate were 8.5 percentage points more likely to be employed and 6.4 percentage points less likely to be receiving a benefit than their matched comparisons two years after finishing. Slightly larger benefits were experienced by those who completed a qualification at level 4 or higher. The size of the employment impacts associated with gaining a qualification varied by gender and ethnicity, the type of tertiary provider and the subject area of the qualification. There was no evidence that tertiary study had a significant impact on participants' level of earnings, after controlling for their employment status.

We study the evolution of educational attainment of the 1932–1972 cohorts using a calibrated model of investment in human capital with heterogeneous learning ability. The inter-cohort variation in schooling is driven by changes in skill prices, tuition, and education quality over time, and average learning ability across cohorts. A version of the model with static expectations is successful in accounting for the main patterns in the data. Rising skill prices for college explain the rapid increase in college graduation till the 1948 cohort. The measured decline in average learning ability contributes to explain the stagnation in college graduation between the 1948 and 1972 cohorts.

Only few previous studies have explored cross-national variation in the relationship between educational certificates and competences. In this paper, we investigate the certificate-competence relationship, operationalized as skills gaps by level of educational attainment. More importantly, we scrutinize how two aspects of educational stratification processes, vertical stratification and occupation-specificity, affects skills gaps. Using data on 25-54 year olds from the 2011/12 round of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), we find that more occupation-specific education systems produce smaller differences in basic general skills between adults with low and intermediate levels of education. Higher levels of vertical stratification, by contrast, result in larger low-intermediate skills gaps. None of the two stratification aspects can however explain variations in the skills gaps between intermediate and high educated adults. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for labor market research.

This article analyses the effects of the German parental leave benefit, which was introduced in 2007, on household income and fertility. The analysis combines SOEP and German Micro Census data in order to apply techniques based on event history analysis (SOEP) as well as differential analyses based on a high number of cases (Micro Census). It is argued that on average, the income situation of families with babies has slightly improved, but this is due to a considerable raise for highly-educated parents. The results for fertility correspond to these income effects: The multivariate analyses for the transition to the second child show no reform effect regarding the total population. However, there are interesting group-specific effects. Age-specific fertility rates, which are based on Micro Census data, are increasing among 35- to 44-year-old highly-educated women. In addition, the event history analysis shows a significant effect for the interaction of reform and this age group. Both suggest that the parental leave benefit has an effect on recuperation among highly-educated women who are at least in their mid-thirties. Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag analysiert die Wirkungen des 2007 eingeführten deutschen Elterngelds auf das Haushaltseinkommen und die Fertilität. Bei der Analyse werden SOEP- und Mikrozensus-Daten kombiniert, um sowohl ereignisanalytische Techniken anzuwenden (SOEP), als auch differenzielle Analysen basierend auf hohen Fallzahlen vorzunehmen (Mikrozensus). Es wird gezeigt, dass sich im Durchschnitt das Einkommen von Familien mit Babys etwas erhöht hat, wobei sich dahinter ein erheblicher Anstieg bei Akademikereltern verbirgt. Mit diesen Einkommensbefunden korrespondieren die Fertilitätsergebnisse: Bei den multivariaten Analysen zum Übergang zum zweiten Kind zeigt sich für die Gesamtbevölkerung kein Reformeffekt. Allerdings verbergen sich hinter der Gesamtbetrachtung gruppenspezifische Effekte. Die Mikrozensus-Analysen zeigen, dass die altersspezifischen Fertilitätsraten bei 35- bis 44-jährigen Akademikerinnen angestiegen sind, auch in der Ereignisanalyse zeigt sich ein signifikanter Interaktionseffekt für die Elterngeldreform und dieses Alter. Beides deutet darauf hin, dass das Elterngeld den Recuperationeffekt – das Nachholen aufgeschobener Geburten – von hochqualifizierten Frauen ab Mitte 30 verstärkt., Journal of Family Research, Vol 25 No 2 (2013): Elterngeld und Elternzeit in Deutschland: Ziele, Diskurse und Wirkungen

USA ; Schweden ; Deutschland ; Hochschule ; Bildungsabschluss ; Lebenslauf ; Karriere ; Soziale Ungleichheit

The study investigates the efficiency of local public educational expenditure of 31 provinces in China during 2005-2010, using the Slack-based Measurement (SBM) directional distance function. The results show that public educational expenditure is the most efficient in eastern China, followed by middle and western areas. The inefficiency can be explained mostly by the number of master graduates, while the impacts of the number of undergraduates and graduates from secondary school are also significant. Additionally, bootstrap method is applied to explore the contextual factors influencing the efficiency. The results suggest that economic development and urbanization process increase the efficiency, while the state-owned industry obstructs the development.

The low number of college graduates with science degrees - particularly among under-represented minorities - is of growing concern. We examine differences across universities in graduating students in different fields. Using student-level data on the University of California system during a period in which racial preferences were in place, we show significant sorting into majors based on academic preparation, with science majors at each campus having on average stronger credentials than their non-science counterparts. Students with relatively weaker academic preparation are significantly more likely to leave the sciences and take longer to graduate at each campus. We show the vast majority of minority students would be more likely to graduate with a science degree and graduate in less time had they attended a lower ranked university. Similar results do not apply for non-minority students.

This paper provides among the first rigorous estimates of the labor-market returns to community college certificates and diplomas, as well as estimating the returns to the more commonly-studied associate’s degrees. Using administrative data from Kentucky, we estimate panel-data models that control for differences among students in pre-college earnings and educational aspirations. Associate’s degrees and diplomas have quarterly earnings returns of nearly $2,400 for women and $1,500 for men, compared with much smaller returns for certificates. There is substantial heterogeneity in returns across fields of study. Degrees, diplomas, and – for women – certificates correspond with higher levels of employment. Not applicable

Mental health problems - and depression in particular - have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and poor educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a low international ranking both on measures of child wellbeing and the probability of early drop-out from the labour market and education. We study this issue using a large longitudinal study of a recent cohort of teenagers in England. We use the General Health Questionnaire to derive measures of poor mental health. We find a large negative association between mental health problems and educational outcomes - where we consider examination results before leaving compulsory education and the probability of being not in education, employment or training at a young age. The association is large even after including a very rich set of controls. Results are stronger for girls and also vary according to the different components of the mental health measure. We also explore the potential role of intermediary mechanisms (truancy and risky behaviors).

We use a reform that was recently implemented in Italy to investigate the effects on academic achievement of more stringent requirements for the admission to the next grade at upper secondary school. We study how such effects are mediated by changes in family and school inputs, and in the student commitment to learn all school subjects including those usually considered as marginal components of the curriculum. Geographical discontinuities in the implementation of the reform allow us to set out the comparison of similar students undergoing alternative progression rules, and to shed light on whether, and to what extent, the reform has worked as a tool to improve short-term achievement gains. We document differential effects across curricular tracks, picturing at best - depending on the data employed - a marginal improvement for students in academic schools. We instead find sharp negative effects of the reform in technical and vocational schools, where the students enrolled come from less privileged backgrounds. These findings are accompanied by a substantial increase in the number of activities out of the normal school hours in technical and vocational schools, but not in academic schools. Also, we find that the reform has left unchanged the various family inputs that we consider, and that parents did not provide extra economic support to students facing an increased threat of grade retention. However, in contrast with the documented effects on achievement, we find that schools reacted to the additional administrative burdens and costs imposed by the reform by admitting more students to the next grade. We thus conclude that the reform has had a negative effect on motivation and engagement of the most struggling students, thus exacerbating existing inequalities.

Resit exams - extra opportunities to do an exam in the same academic year - are widely prevalent in European higher education, but uncommon in the US. I present a simple theoretical model to compare rational student behavior in the case of only one exam opportunity versus the case of two exam opportunities. Numerical examples for a wide range of plausible parameter values show that a second exam opportunity increases the ultimate passing probability only slightly, but strongly reduces average total student effort.

Using a specific micro-dataset with information on working histories, we analyse the labour market entry of Spanish youths who have completed vocational education. According to the education system, young people can enter the labour market with vocational high school (upper secondary education) or with vocational college (tertiary education). Both present a period of workplace training, although, as they belong two distinct schooling levels, they have different entry requirements. Those who complete vocational college has spent more years in education and we would expect more success in finding a first job. Surprisingly, results do not confirm this hypothesis. We do not find important differences in the estimates of the determinants of transitions across types of vocational education. Apprenticeship has a very important role on increasing the hazard rate to employment and this result holds after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and previous labour experience.

Proposition 209 banned using racial preferences in admissions at California's public colleges. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates of minorities increased by 4.4%. We characterize conditions required for better matching of students to campuses to account for this increase. We find that Prop 209 did improve matching and this improvement was important for the graduation gains experienced by less-prepared students. At the same time, better matching only explains about 20% of the overall graduation rate increase. Changes after Prop 209 in the selectivity of enrolled students explains 34-50% of the increase. Finally, it appears UC campuses responded to Prop 209 by doing more to help retain and graduate its students, which explains between 30-46% of the post-Prop 209 improvement in the graduation rate of minorities.

This paper focuses on the predictive validity of the upper secondary grade point average (GPA), when used as selection instrument to higher education. The purpose of the paper is to find out if the predictive strength of the GPA is affected by time, here measured as the time that has passed between when the grades were received (graduation) and university entrance. The data includes approximately 5 900 students admitted to a Business administration or an Economics programme in a Swedish university between the years 1993 to 1996. The predictive validity is studied by correlating the GPA from upper secondary school for the students from each age group with their academic performance, measured by university credits. The results show that there is a weak positive correlation between grades and university credits, but that the predictive strenght decreases with time, to be insignificant about three years after upper secondary school completion. Implications are discussed.

Between 1960 and 1979, 93 new universities opened in Germany. Using this large tertiary education expansion, I estimate the effect of a university opening on the probability of obtaining a university degree in the local population. I exploit the geographical variation in local university access in a difference-in-differences approach by comparing age cohorts in counties that were and were not affected by the opening. Results show that a new university increases the share of university graduates in a county by 8 to 10 percentage points. The effect seems to be mainly driven my females and immigrants.

We evaluate the labor-market returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We develop a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) method to account for the fact that GED test takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it. Our technique can be applied to other situations where program participation is determined by a score on a retake-able test. Previous regression discontinuity estimates of the returns to GED certification have not accounted for retaking behavior, so these estimates may be biased. We find that the effect of GED certification on either employment or earnings is not statistically significant. GED certification increases postsecondary participation by up to four percentage points for men and up to eight percentage points for women.

We provide a number of contributions of policy, practical and methodological interest to the study of the returns to educational qualifications in the presence of misreporting. First, we provide the first reliable estimates of a highly policy relevant parameter for the UK, namely the return from attaining any academic qualification compared to leaving school at the minimum age without any formal qualification. Second, we provide the academic and policy community with estimates of the accuracy and misclassification patterns of commonly used types of data on educational attainment: administrative files, self-reported information close to the date of completion of the qualification, and recall information ten years after completion. We are in the unique position to assess the temporal patterns of misreporting errors across survey waves, and to decompose misreporting errors into a systematic component linked to individuals' persistent behaviour and into a transitory part reflecting random survey errors. Third, by using the unique nature of our data, we assess how the biases from measurement error and from omitted ability and family background variables interact in the estimation of returns. On the methodological front, we propose a semi-parametric estimation approach based on balancing scores and mixture models, in particular allowing for arbitrarily heterogeneous individual returns.

We analyze students' cheating behavior during a national evaluation test. We model the mechanisms that trigger cheating interactions between students and show that, when monitoring is not sufficiently accurate, a social multiplier may magnify the effects on students' achievements. We exploit a randomized experiment, which envisaged the presence of an external inspector in the administration and marking of the tests, to estimate a structural (endogenous) social multiplier in students' cheating. The empirical strategy exploits the Excess-Variance approach (Graham, 2008). We find a strong amplifying role played by social interactions within classrooms: students' cheating behaviors more than double the class average test scores results. The effects are found to be larger when students are more homogeneous in terms of parental background characteristics and social ties.

Do negative incentives or sticks in education improve student outcomes? Since the late 1980s, several U.S. states have introduced No Pass No Drive (NPND) laws that set minimum academic requirements for teenagers to obtain driving licenses. Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and Monitoring the Future (MTF), we exploit variation across state, time, and cohort to show that NPND laws led to a 6.4 percentage point increase in the probability of graduating from high school among black males. Further, we show that NPND laws were effective in reducing truancy and increased time allocated to school-work at the expense of leisure and work.

This article examines social continuity and discontinuity in the Hungarian political, economic and cultural elites between 1988 and 2009. In these two decades, four empirical surveys (five among the economic elite) have been carried out at the Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to explore the composition, recruitment, lifestyle, and attitudes of different elite groups. This large amount of data (4773 persons, in total) allows us to follow long term trends not yet analyzed and distinguish between several types of social processes in the Hungarian elite. The analysis complements but also augments some of the main findings of the earlier literature an elite circulation and reproduction under post-communism., Historical Social Research Vol. 37, No. 2 (2012): Special Issue: Political and Functional Elites in Post-Socialist Transformation: Central and East Europe since 1989/90 Starting Point and Frequency: Year: 1979, Issues per volume: 4, Volumes per year: 1

In this paper we show the importance of subject of degree in explaining the gender wage gap in Colombia. In order to minimize the influence of gender differences in experience, promotions, and job changes on the wage gap, we focus on college graduates who have a formal job and who have been in the labor market at most one year. Using unique, administrative datasets with detailed subjects of degree, we find that the wage gap against women is on average 11% and that 40% of it can be explained by differences in subject of degree. Using a distributional decomposition, we find an increasing gender wage gap across the distribution of wages (from 2% at the bottom to 15% at the top), although subject of degree explains a lower 30% of the gap at the top. Policies designed to reduce the gender wage gap need to address the differing gender educational choices and the factors that influence them. These policies would be more effective in reducing the gap for median wage earners.

This paper surveys the trends in gender gaps in education, their causes and potential policy implications. I show that female educational attainment has surpassed, or is about to surpass, male educational attainment in most industrialized countries. These gaps reflect male overrepresentation among secondary school drop-outs and female overrepresentation among tertiary education students and graduates. Existing evidence suggests that this pattern is a result of a combination of increasing returns to education and lower female effort costs of education. Widening gender gap in education combined with recent wage and employment polarization will likely lead to widening inequalities and is linked to declining male labor force participation. The paper discusses evidence on educational policies that both widen and reduce gender gaps in educational outcomes.

We explore the forces that shape the development of aspirations and the achievement of grades during high school and the role that these aspirations, grades, and other variables play in educational outcomes such as going to university and graduating. We find that parental expectations and peer effects have a significant impact on educational outcomes through grades, aspirations, and their interconnectedness, an issue explained in the context of a rich, longitudinal data set. Apart from this indirect path, parents and peers also influence educational outcomes directly. Policy measures that operate on parental influences may modify educational outcomes in desired directions.

Many countries use centralized exit exams as a governance devise of the school system. While abundant evidence suggests positive effects of central exams on achievement tests, previous research on university-bound students shows no effects on subsequent earnings. We suggest that labor-market effects may be more imminent for students leaving school directly for the labor market and, on rigid labor markets, for unemployment. Exploiting variation in exit-exam systems across German states, we find that central exams are indeed associated with higher earnings for students from school types directly bound for the labor market, as well as with lower unemployment.

College students now use various forms of unsecured credit such as private student loans and credit cards to finance college. Access to these credit lines and the interest rates charged on these loans can vary significantly across credit scores. In this paper, we analyze if credit status, as measured by self-reported characteristics of an individual's credit standing, affects college investment. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we study a sample of young high school graduates to estimate how three different measures of credit status affect college attainment and completion rates. After correcting for selection and endogeneity issues, we find that credit status is more important the longer the student stays in college. For example, having bad credit significantly lowers the probability of completing a four-year college degree, but has a smaller (but significant) impact on attaining some college. We find robust evidence that credit status affects the intensive margin of college investment, but is less important for the extensive margin. Our results suggest that bad credit status, which lowers the availability of unsecured credit to finance college and thereby makes college investment more expensive, significantly reduces college completion rates.

We exploit exogenous variation in college completion induced by draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War to examine the impact of college completion on adult mortality. Our preferred estimates imply that increasing college completion rates from the level of the state with the lowest induced rate to the highest would decrease cumulative mortality by 28 percent relative to the mean. Most of the reduction in mortality is from deaths due to cancer and heart disease. We also explore potential mechanisms, including differential earnings, health insurance, and health behaviors, using data from the Census, ACS, and NHIS.

The academic circles are devoting a growing interest to delayed graduation and overeducation, but none has analyzed the joint consequences of these two phenomena. Thus, this paper studies the link between graduation not within the minimum period and overeducation, and the effects of these variables on wages, using the ISFOL-Plus data. According to the human capital model, delayed graduation increases a student' human capital and should, therefore, reduce her probability of being overeducated, while increasing her wage. According to the screening hypothesis, instead, delayed graduation signals low skills and therefore increases the chances of being overeducated, while bearing a wage penalty. The evidence lines towards predictions based on the screening hypothesis. First, delayed graduation increases the chances of overeducation. In addition, the direct wage penalty associated to delayed graduation equals 7% of the median wage. However, being a determinant of overeducation, it also indirectly contributes to the penalty of 19.8% of the median wage associated to overeducation. These effects are sizeable, considering the very low returns to higher education in Italy reported in previous studies.

This is the first study investigating the causal effect of maternal education on child's health and schooling outcomes in Germany. We apply an instrumental variables approach that has not yet been used in the intergenerational context. For that purpose, we draw on a rich German panel data set (SOEP) containing information about three generations. This allows instrumenting maternal education by the number of her siblings while conditioning on a set of variables describing the grandparents' social status and the area where the mother grew up. Given these variables, the number of siblings generates exogenous variation in the years of education by affecting the household resources available per child. We present evidence for strong and significant effects on schooling outcomes for both sexes. And, we find substantial effects on health behaviour for adolescent daughters, but not for adolescent sons. We show that possible concerns for the validity of the instrument are unlikely to compromise these results. We also discuss assortative mating and household income as possible channels of causality.

"Gerade am Anfang der Erwerbskarriere ist Arbeitslosigkeit keine Seltenheit. In diesem Artikel argumentieren wir, dass in Abhängigkeit von institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen Arbeitslosigkeit verschiedene Konsequenzen für die zukünftige Erwerbskarriere in Großbritannien und Deutschland hat. Während Such- und Matchingmodelle positive Effekte prognostizieren, sagen die Humankapitaltheorie und Signaltheorie negative Effekte voraus. Der berufsorientierte Arbeitsmarkt in Deutschland mit seinem starken Kündigungsschutz könnte zur Stigmatisierung von Arbeitslosen führen, was sich negativ auf die zukünftige Erwerbskarriere auswirken könnte. Die "trial and error" Strategie in einem liberalen Arbeitsmarkt wie Großbritannien könnte dagegen die berufliche Position nach der Arbeitslosigkeit verbessern. Bei Auswertung der Daten werden GSEP und BHPS Datensätze benutzt und simultan die Hazardraten und die Veränderung im beruflichen Status geschätzt." (Autorenreferat) "The beginning of the employment career is often associated with phases of unemployment. We argue that unemployment has different implications for different educational groups on future employment career depending on institutional settings in the UK and Germany. While search and matching models argue that an unemployment phase might be used for an active job search and might result in a better position, human capital and signalling theory predict status losses. The strongly skillbased and rigid labour market in Germany creates a stigma attached to unemployment and therefore might have negative consequences upon the re-entry into the labour market for all educational groups. The "trial and error" strategy at the beginning of an employment career in flexible labour markets is common and therefore search and matching models should predict positive outcomes in the UK, especially for high-educated persons. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and British Household Panel we simultaneously estimate hazard rates and changes in the occupational status." (author's abstract)

We use data on inter-generational gains in educational attainment by some 500,000 individuals in 200 West Bengal villages to explore gender-differentiated impacts of land reform on human capital accumulation at the individual level. While there are significant gains (of about 0.3 years for males) in the immediate post-reform generation, their magnitude pales in comparison to second-generation effects of between 0.85 and 1.2 years that appear irrespectively of the land reform modality. Moreover, there are possibly significant spillover benefits on villagers who did not directly benefit from reform. Placebo tests and alternative specifications support robustness of the results. By contrast, levels of beneficiary productivity and welfare remain far below average, something that could likely be avoided if land reform beneficiaries would receive full ownership rights - rather than being recognized as permanent share tenants and if restrictions on transferability of land were abandoned.

This paper examines the implications of tuition and need-based financial aid policies for family income - post-secondary (PS) attendance relationships. We first conduct a parallel empirical analysis of the effects of parental income on PS attendance for recent high school cohorts in both the U.S. and Canada using data from the 1997 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and Youth in Transition Survey. We estimate substantially smaller PS attendance gaps by parental income in Canada relative to the U.S., even after controlling for family background, adolescent cognitive achievement, and local residence fixed effects. We next document that U.S. public tuition and financial aid policies are actually more generous to low-income youth than are Canadian policies. By contrast, Canada offers more generous aid to middle-class youth than does the U.S. These findings suggest that the much stronger family income - PS attendance relationship in the U.S. is not driven by differences in the need-based nature of financial aid policies. Based on previous estimates of the effects of tuition and aid on PS attendance, we consider how much stronger income - attendance relationships would be in the absence of need-based aid and how much additional aid would need to be offered to lower income families to eliminate existing income - attendance gaps entirely.