Card and Krueger (1992a,b) used labor market outcomes to study the productivity of school spending. Following their lead, we examine effects of post-1990 school finance reforms on students' educational attainment and labor market outcomes. Using a state-by-cohort panel design, we find that reforms increased high school completion and…

In March, the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) released the first in a series of reports updating and expanding our previous work examining the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce. That first report, "STEM Jobs. 2017 Update," provided an overview of STEM workers and their earning power. This second report…

There has been a long-standing concern amongst policymakers, economists, and trade unions over the persistent earnings gap between men and women in the Canadian labour market. Although this gap has narrowed over time, women's average hourly wages still remain about 16% lower than that earned by men. The reasons for this inequality in male and…

This study investigates the incidence of over-education amongst recent Australian bachelor degree graduates and its effect on their earnings. We find that between 24% and 37% of graduates were over-educated shortly after course completion, with over-education most common amongst young females and least common amongst older females. Over-education…

Gender inequalities persist in all areas of social and economic life and across countries. Young women in OECD countries generally obtain more years of schooling than young men, but women are less likely than men to engage in paid work. Gaps widen with age, as motherhood typically has marked negative effects on gender pay gaps and career…

Postsecondary education yields myriad benefits, including increased earnings potential, higher lifetime wages, and access to quality jobs. But postsecondary degrees are not all equal in the benefits they bring to students, and women tend to obtain degrees in fields with lower earnings. Women with associate degrees earn approximately 75 percent of…

The present study examined the extent to which the U.S. STEM labor market is stratified in terms of quality of employment. Through a series of cluster analyses and Chi-square tests on data drawn from the 2008 Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), the study found evidence of segmentation in the highly-skilled STEM and non-STEM samples,…

This article analyses a recent cohort (2006) of UK graduates, and explores the previously neglected relationship between age and post-degree employment. Much work on mature students assumes their overall experience to be one of disadvantage relative to traditional-age graduates, and this includes employability research. Here, mature students are…

There are sizeable earnings differentials by gender and race in the U.S. labor market, with women earning less than men and most racial/ethnic minority groups earning less than whites. It has been proposed in the previous literature that the effects of gender and race on earnings are additive, so that minority women suffer the full disadvantage of…

The first chapter studies the effects of a teacher performance bonus program implemented in Brazil in 2008. The program covered all schools directly managed by the State of Sao Paulo government, and was based on a standardized test run by the state education authority. I use high-school exit exams organized by the federal government (ENEM) to…

We show that the narrowing gender gap and the growth in earnings inequality are consistent with a simple model in which skills are heterogeneous, and the growth in skill prices has been particularly strong for skills with which women are well endowed. Empirical analysis of DOT, CPS, and NLSY79 data finds evidence to support this model. A large…

Gender equality is not just about economic empowerment. It is a moral imperative, it is about fairness and equity, and includes many political, social and cultural dimensions. Gender equality, however, is also a key factor in self-reported well-being and happiness across the world. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, there is now an urgent…

In this essay, the author provides a critique of sources relevant to the feminization of teaching in the United States from the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Sources covering topics such as the American Civil War, labor market forces, increasing urbanization, educational reform, and regional differences, and how they affected the feminization…

We assess the impact of the welfare state on cross-national variation in the gender wage gap. Earnings inequality between men and women is conceptualized as resulting from their different locations in the class hierarchy, combined with the severity of wage differentials between and within classes. This decomposition contributes to identifying…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender impact of tertiary education on the probability of entering and remaining in self-employment. Design/methodology/approach: A data set on labour market flows produced by the Italian National Statistical Office is exploited by interviewing about 62,000 graduate and non-graduate…