Recent evidence indicates substantial heterogeneity in the returns to skills across countries, but only a few studies have explained the varying patterns in the return to skills. Using the 2013 STEP data for Ghana and Kenya, we estimate the causal effect of cognitive and noncognitive skills on a large set of labour market outcomes by controlling…

Purpose: The paper explores the relationship between vocational education and training (VET), the labour market and social justice in the current conjuncture. Approach: The paper adopts an approach rooted in critical policy analysis. It consequently sets the discussion within the wider socio-economic and political context. Such an approach enables…

Does increasing the minimum wage reduce the high school completion rate? Previous research has suffered from (1. narrow time horizons, (2. potentially inadequate measures of states' high school completion rates, and (3. potentially inadequate measures of minimum wage rates. Overcoming each of these limitations, we analyze the impact of changes in…

The extent to which community college students experience labor market success depends on both the attributes of the individual students and the characteristics of the community colleges they attend. In this paper, we examine the impact of community college characteristics on the earnings of first-time college students who enrolled in the North…

The primary purpose of the report is to explore the impact of PISA reading scores on the early labour market outcomes of young Canadians of the Youth in Transition Survey. This inquiry is complicated by two facts. First, family and school characteristics that are positively correlated with PISA scores are also correlated with labour market…

From the 1960s to the 1990s in the United States, a distinctive feature was observed in variations in the number of Bachelor's degree recipients by field of study. The number in each field demonstrated certain cyclical patterns. Similarly, the U.S. economy experienced fluctuations during a comparable period. Given this 40-year trend, this study…

There have been concerns that employment-enhancing reforms along the lines of the 1994 OECD Jobs Strategy could inadvertently lead to increased income inequality and poverty. This paper focuses on the impact of institutions and redistributive policies on inequality and poverty with the view of assessing whether a trade-off between better labour…

Across OECD countries, governments are seeking policies to make education more effective while searching for additional resources to meet the increasing demand for education. The 2010 edition of "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators" enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries' performance. It provides a rich, comparable…

"Highlights from Education at a Glance 2010" is a companion publication to the OECD's flagship compendium of education statistics, Education at a Glance. It provides easily accessible data on key topics in education today, including: education levels and student numbers, economic and social benefits of education, education spending, the school…