Changes over time in social-class inequality of educational attainment have been shown by previous research to depend on whether attainment is measured absolutely or relatively. The pioneering work in this respect by Bukodi and Goldthorpe found that inequality has fallen when attainment is measured absolutely (for example, as the percentage…

Using data from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators, this brief explores changes in the Los Angeles County labor market and in the working-age population as a plausible explanation for some of the enrollment decline at the county's community college campuses.

School absences can negatively impact a child's schooling, including the loss of teacher-led lessons, peer interactions, and, ultimately, academic achievement. However, little is known about the long-term consequences of school absences for overall educational attainment and labour market outcomes. In this paper, we used data from the 1970 British…

We study the 1992 higher education expansion reform in Turkey and examine how the expansion program changed higher education attainment and labor market access, particularly for women, who are disadvantaged on both accounts. We use the 2011 Population and Housing Census and employ a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. We find that the…

Utilizing the Survey of Adult Skills from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the OECD database, this study investigates the role of gender inequality and public social spending in the gender gap in Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) risk across various age cohorts. The research identifies a…

This article compares the education, employment, and care work biographical sequences of Canadian and German women and men from late adolescence into mid-adulthood. Through the lenses of comparative gendered life course theory and welfare regime theory, sequence and cluster analyses are used to determine the adult life course sequences of women…

Nationally, more than 75% of individuals who are credentialed to teach are prepared in traditional college- or university-based teacher education programs (TEPs). But the college and employment pathways that prospective teachers take to TEP enrollment and completion have not been comprehensively examined. A better understanding of how credentialed…

This dissertation consists of three papers on education policy. In each paper, I use applied econometric methods and descriptive quantitative analysis to examine topics related to teacher labor markets and postsecondary attainment. The first paper leverages a rich student-teacher-day data set to study the relationship between daily teacher…

Each year, over a thousand public schools in the US close due to declining enrollments and chronic low performance, displacing hundreds of thousands of students. Using Texas administrative data and empirical strategies that use within-student across-time and within-school across-cohort variation, I explore the impact of school closures on…

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that explore the educational experiences and trajectories of English learners (ELs) and students with disabilities. The first study uses longitudinal data from four large California school districts to examine the characteristics of long-term ELs (LTELs) and former ELs--those reclassified as…

This dissertation consists of three essays focused on policies that hold the potential to reduce gender and socioeconomic gaps in the developing world. The first two chapters focus on higher education while the last chapter focuses on STEM gender gaps during primary school. Chapter 1 looks at the impacts of new transportation infrastructure on…