Analysis of the costs of employing older workers indicates that some types of employment costs do vary by age and that overall compensation costs increase with age, largely because of increasing employee benefit costs. There is, however, no statistical evidence that direct salary costs increase by age on an economy-wide basis. The belief that…

Presented from a geographical perspective, this book examines major themes of human geography by drawing from the literature on feminism. The book is arranged into four parts. Part 1 examines sex ratios throughout the world, geographical distribution of female rights and status, spatial patterns of the Equal Rights Amendment ratification, the…

The Younger Adult Worker (YAW) study examined the long-range impact of participation in vocational education through a national cross-sectional survey of 1,539 persons aged 20 to 24 who were in the civilian labor force. After supplementing study data with data from two other national data bases, researchers drew conclusions pertaining to the…

The advances women have made in the past decade have created the myth that women have achieved equal opportunity in the job market. In reality, the opposite is true. The current economic status of women demonstrates the need for strict enforcement of equal opportunity laws. Department of Labor data indicate that the wage gap between men and women…

Work in the lives of most Third World nation women is not a matter of equity and/or self-actualization. Rather, the changing economic roles and responsibilities of women make working a matter of economic survival. Despite the limitations of existing definitional and measurement problems related to data collection, regional data do exist which…

Developments pertinent to women's rights and women's studies at colleges and universities are reported. The following areas are covered: the status of women's college sports programs and alleged sex discrimination involving college faculty and school organizations; the impact of litigation in promoting equity for women; approaches for handling…

The federal policy shift from skills training and toward work first strategies has come about, in part, from a misconception that "training does not work." A more comprehensive look at existing research reveals the documented effectiveness of skills training. A growing number of studies have shown skills training can increase earnings;…

This serial is in four sections. Part 1--Features: "American Social Policy"; "A Generational Perspective on Young Adults"; "Rising Income Inequality and Poverty"; "A Victim of Policy Neglect? 'Wealth Inequality'"; "Balancing Growth with Economic Equality"; "Economic Inequality: 'A Comparative…

In the past few years, union activists and some policymakers have increasingly portrayed part-time work as problematic for a worker. According to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the part-time "problem" is more rhetoric than reality. Only 17% of U.S. workers are classified as part-time. Of those 17%, 15% are…

Student outcomes at Australia's technical and further education (TAFE) institutes were compared to those at Australian universities. The study was based on data from a survey completed by 39,426 individuals who had graduated from TAFE courses in 2000 and a survey of the more than 150,000 individuals who graduated from an Australian university in…

The career and technical education (CTE) system before Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has been characterized as traditionally dominated by gender segregation and discrimination. The most damaging consequence of such gender bias is to limit females' access to the benefits of CTE--the living wage that provides females the same economic…

The Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project (SEDLP) examined industry-based ("sectoral") approaches to employment training to determine whether they can help low-income individuals advance in the labor market. The SEDLP sample included 732 individuals at baseline, including 185 recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy…

A representative survey of over 30,000 people aged 16-64 years across the 15 member states of the European Union and Norway sought Europeans' preferences for increasing or reducing the number of hours worked per week. Key finding included the following: (1) 51% preferred to work fewer hours in exchange for lower earnings while 12% preferred to…

Of the 400,000 graduates in the United Kingdom in 1998, more than 200,000 had first degrees and the others had undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications. More than one in three graduates had already undertaken paid work while still in school (primarily in the service sector). The demand for graduates among the traditional recruiters and reports…

This book contains 10 papers about developing a systematic approach to the school-to-work transition in Europe and the United States; the role of training and formal qualifications; and unemployment and social inequality. The following papers are included: "Understanding the School-to-Work Transition--An Introduction" (Thomas Lange);…