In 2021, Child Trends was selected to conduct a literature review and develop a policy and practice report to map the history of systemic racism in the U.S. and how it has influenced early childhood education (ECE) policy and practice, with a particular focus on educator pay and benefits, preparation, and workforce stability. This report…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented economic and policy challenges to the United States and other countries. Navigating out of the pandemic slowdown is another novel experience, which makes it more difficult to answer the question addressed each year in the "State of Working Pennsylvania": How is the Pennsylvania economy…

Women in the Academy are raising issues of pay parity, equal representation on committees, increased leadership positions, stories of resilience, and mentorship espousing changes at all levels including teaching, research, and administration. These strategies demand interrogation, and larger questions are being asked about the place of women…

The question of why postsecondary institutions produce different labor market outcomes is difficult to answer due to unobserved student characteristics. Here, I leverage students' geographic proximity to three classifications of postsecondary institutions -- earnings-enhancing, competitive, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).…

Textbooks socialise and legitimise cultural norms, and therefore, learners' social worlds should find expression in their textbooks. In the study reported on here we examined how Grade 4 English First Additional Language and life skills textbooks reflected learner diversity in South African schools as manifested in their racial, gender,…

Tom Wilson, the chair of the executive committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published an op-ed titled "Save Capitalism by Paying People More." Wilson acknowledges in blunt terms that ordinary working Americans are not flourishing economically. This year's annual "The State of Working Pennsylvania" documents the accuracy of…

The dual labor market theory (DLM) posited the existence of two distinct labor markets working in parallel. A primary one is a place where high wages, employment stability and high opportunities for advancement are the norms. On the other hand, low wages, arbitrariness and less desirable working conditions determine a secondary market. The main…

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition (BOD) is a popular method for studying the contributions of explanatory factors to social inequality. The results have often been given causal interpretations. While recent work and this article both show that some types of BOD are equivalent to a counterfactual-based treatment effect/selection bias decomposition,…

A postsecondary credential is associated with higher levels of earnings, not just in the short term, but over a lifetime. Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce found that college graduates earn more than one million dollars more in lifetime wages, compared to high school graduates. However, many factors influence…

Discussion and comparison of faculty salaries in academia is an ongoing research interest for all stakeholders in higher education. The intention of this research is to understand the differences in faculty salaries within five business classifications and across other academic subject areas. Various authors have examined different aspects of…

The Ruderman Family Foundation in partnership with the American Institute for Research (AIR) and the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) created two research briefs that inform the business community in Boston and several other top metropolitan areas about the challenges faced by workers with disabilities and the contributions that…

In the academic capitalist knowledge regime, institutions compete for prestige and funding. Reward structures emphasize science and engineering (S&E) fields for their potential to generate money and status. Masculine norms and male majority in S&E fields may create conditions for gender differences in faculty compensation. We explored the…

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance…

In this brief, we set out to understand how unionization may or may not shape practices central to charter schools' ability to serve students. The study, an exploratory one, includes 29 interviews across eight schools that unionized four to six years ago. Our results point to areas of concern, optimism, and future research. We found: (1)…

Many of the gender and racial wage gaps found in society are also seen within higher education, with less diversity among college administrators, faculty, and staff than the United States population as a whole. Postsecondary institutions alone cannot correct the systemic inequities that limit socioeconomic mobility and racial justice, but they can…