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Exploiting information on foreign qualifications for the first time, we estimate the returns to obtaining UK higher degrees for foreign graduates who migrated to the UK in their 20s. Accounting for direct measures of foreign and UK qualifications and country‐of‐origin fixed effects, we find substantial returns to obtaining UK (higher) degrees on hourly wages and occupational attainment for both genders, working mainly through occupational attainment. However, there is strong evidence that the effect of the high returns is driven by immigrants from countries where English is not a dominant language. Moreover, returns to UK (higher) degrees are more pronounced for graduates from low‐HDI/GDP countries, suggesting an important role for the incompatibility of education and skills between home and destination countries. We further examine the robustness of our results by using a partial identification method, and our findings suggest that the extent of selection on unobservables required to eliminate a positive treatment effect is too large to be plausible, especially for men. Our study extends previous research with the first evidence from the UK, by showing large positive effects of post‐migration investments in human capital acquisition on labour market outcomes. Obtaining UK higher degrees appears to reduce the informational uncertainty associated with foreign credentials, facilitate cultural and economic assimilation, and boost economic opportunities for foreign graduates, especially for those developing/poor country immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, students in England and Wales born within the first 5 months of the academic year could leave school one term earlier than those born later in the year. Focusing on women, those who were required to stay on an extra term more frequently hold some academic qualification. Using having been required to stay on as an exogenous factor affecting academic attainment, we find that holding a low-level academic qualification has no effect on the probability of being currently married for women aged 25 or above, but increases the probability of the husband holding some academic qualification and being economically active. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments, over much of the developed world, make significant financial transfers to parents with dependent children. For example, in the United States the recently introduced Child Tax Credit (CTC), which goes to almost all children, costs almost $1 billion each week, or about 0.4% of GNP. The United Kingdom has even more generous transfers and spends an average of about $30 a week on each of about 8 million children-about 1% of GNP. The typical rationale given for these transfers is that they are good for our children and here we investigate the effect of such transfers on household spending patterns. In the United Kingdom such transfers, known as Child Benefit (CB), have been simple lump sum universal payments for a continuous period of more than 20 years. We do indeed find that CB is spent differently from other income-paradoxically, it appears to be spent disproportionately on adult-assignable goods. In fact, we estimate that as much as half of a marginal dollar of CB is spent on alcohol. We resolve this puzzle by showing that the effect is confined to unanticipated variation in CB so we infer that parents are sufficiently altruistic toward their children that they completely insure them against shocks. ( JEL I38, D79, D12) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]