labor market returns to two and four year college the paper examines labor market returns to a two and four year college education analysis of the 1972 national longitudinal survey of youth observation that the average person who attended a two year college earned about 10 percent more than those without any college education comparison with the wages of those who attended a four year college education

economic growth comparative advantage and gender differences in schooling outcomes evidence from the birthweight differences of chinese twins abstract data from two surveys of twins in china are used to contribute to an improved understanding of the role of economic development in affecting gender differences in the trends in levels of and returns to schooling observed in china and in many developing countries in recent decades in particular we explore the hypothesis that these phenomena reflect differences in comparative advantage with respect to skill and brawn between men and women in the context of changes in incomes returns to skill and or nutritional improvements that are the result of economic development and growth

gender differences in training capital and wages this paper constructs an equilibrium job matching model where workers differ in their attachment to the labor force the model predicts that workers with weaker attachment to the labor market will receive lower starting wages and lower post training wages and will be placed in jobs that offer less training and use less capital the implications of the model for gender differences in pay and job assignment are tested with the eopp data set ourfindings suggest that while training intensity during the first three months of employment is similar in positions filled by males and females females are employed in positions that have a shorter duration of on the job training and that use less capital these differences in on the job training and capital in positions filled by men and women as well as a lower market value for women s prior labor market experience account for a substantial part of the gap in wages between males and females

on decomposing the wage gap a critical comment on blinder s method many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible

marriage motherhood and wages we explore several problems in drawing causal inferences from cross sectional relationships between marriage motherhood and wages we find that heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of the direct effects of marriage and motherhood on wages i e effects net of experience and tenure first difference estimates reveal no direct effect of marriage or motherhood on women s wages we also find statistical evidence that experience and tenure may be endogenous variables in wage equations instrumental variables estimates suggest that both ordinary least squares cross sectional and first difference estimates understate the direct negative effect of children on wages

sex related wage differentials and women s interrupted labor careers the chicken or the egg wage differentials between men and women are often attributed to differences in on the job training the lower investment of women being explained by their plans to interrupt their careers for family reasons career interruptions however are often explained by low wages to trace this interrelationship i adopt a simultaneous equations approach trying to explain wages planned separations on the job training and the skill intensity of the job simultaneously skill intensity is found to be a key variable in the explanation of the wage differential traditional theory is hard pressed to explain the sex related differences in this variable

changes in the male female wage gap 1976 85 this study uses detailed information on work experience tenure and on the job training collected in the 1976 and 1985 questionnaires of the panel study of income dynamics to account for changes in wage differentials between white men and white women over these nine years decompositions of changes in the wage gap are used to illustrate the contribution of individual factors between 1976 and 1985 the wage gap between white men and women narrowed by approximately 4 percent this study finds that nearly 50 percent of this reduction was due to average changes in job tenure and other work history variables over this period

earnings differentiation in the tourism industry gender human capital and socio demographic effects abstract this paper draws attention to a somewhat neglected field within tourism research namely the production side of tourism set within a human capital framework the purpose of the study is to examine if and how the variables education work experience and the socio demographic variables parenthood and marriage affect norwegian tourism employees annual wages in the 1994 2002 period furthermore the study specifically examines how the variables gender and time affect these wages among several findings four are of major importance 1 male tourism employees receive about 20 higher wages annually than their female counterparts ceteris paribus 2 there is a concave i e inverted u relationship between work experience and annual wages for both female and male employees but this pattern is much less distinct for females 3 both parenthood and marriage affect wages but their effects differ between male and female employees 4 all tourism employees experience a positive annual wage development in the period studied

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

gender earnings differentials in total pay base pay and contingent pay copyright by cornell university this is the publisher s version and is also electronically available from http ilr sagepub com content 47 4 634 abstract

are estimates of sex discrimination by employers robust the use of never marrieds current decomposition estimates of sex discrimination by employers are not robust many unobservables like motivation and attitudes toward work are left unmeasured we estimate sex discrimination with two plausible methods of controlling for a major unobservable acceptance of male and female traditional roles in the household the methods offer enormously different estimates of sex discrimination one estimates sex discrimination at over 61 percent of the female wage the other finds little sex discrimination and possibly favoritism toward women the range in estimates is so large that point estimates of sex discrimination by employers are of little use to policymakers

rate of return to schooling and business cycles this paper examines the effects of the economic conditions unemployment rate and unemployment change on the rate of returns to schooling as well as the effects on the gender difference in the

why are the returns to schooling higher for women than for men many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible reasons for this effect using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 one explanation is that education appears to have a double effect on the earnings of women it increases their skills and productivity as it does with men and in addition it appears to reduce the gap in male and female earnings attributable to factors such as discrimination tastes and circumstances the latter appear to account for about half of the differential in the returns to schooling

investment in schooling and the marriage market we present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns the labor market return resulting from higher wages and a marriagemarket return defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles this asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses when the labor market returns to schooling rises home production demands less time and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken more women may invest in schooling than men

gender differentials in the payoff to schooling in rural china this article examines the gender differential in the payoff to schooling in rural china the analyses are based on a framework provided by the over education required education under education literature and the decomposition developed by chiswick and miller 2008 it shows that the payoff to correctly matched education in rural china is much higher for females than for males associated with this the wage penalty where workers are under qualified in their occupation is greater for females than for males over educated females however are advantaged compared with their male counterparts these findings are interpreted using the explanations offered for the gender differential in the payoff to schooling in the growing literature on earnings determination in china

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

on the adoption of genetically modified seeds in developing countries and the optimal types of government intervention given the proprietary nature of most genetically modified gm seed technologies the question arises as to how farmers in developing countries can gain proper access based on empirical observations a theoretical model is developed focusing on farmers adoption decisions in response to pricing strategies of a foreign monopolist and a domestic supplier of conventional seeds government interventions such as seed subsidies encouragement of r d and intellectual property rights ipr enforcement and their effects on gm coverage and national welfare are analyzed the possibility of the government obtaining a license to distribute gm seeds domestically through a transfer to the monopolist is also considered

male female differences in hourly wages the role of human capital working conditions and housework this study uses a new data set from a 1986 survey of workers to examine simultaneously the wage effects of human capital household responsibilities working conditions and on the job training the analysis suggests that household responsibilities had a negative effect on women s earnings but the unexplained difference between the earnings of men and women is not greatly reduced by inclusion in the explanatory model of information on either housework or working conditions the presence of children appears to have had a positive effect on the wages of both men and women t wenty years of research on gender differences in earnings have failed to explain the entire wage gap as a consequence of measured differences between male and female workers some researchers view the unexplained residual as evidence of discrimination against female workers others take the position that the entire wage gap is potentially explicable by differences in labor supply according to the latter view an unexplained wage gap remains because the data sets in use do not contain adequate information on all productivity related characteristics this view implies that the unexplained wage gap will be reduced by more comprehensive infor

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

the returns to education in africa some new estimates abstractwe estimate the rate of return to education for 12 african countries using recent data and a range of methodologies which we apply consistently across all countries our findings confirm that the return to basic education is the lowest 7 10 the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education are similar to one another 25 30 accounting for the risk of joblessness increases these rates of return particularly for basic education and for women at tertiary level our results at the country level suggest that great care should be taken in choosing the appropriate methodology to estimate rates of return

intertemporal substitution and labor supply in japan this paper considers whether japanese labor market data are consistent with the intertemporal substitution hypothesis the japanese labor market data are first tested for broad conformity with the hypothesis using the methodology of ashenfelter and card 1982 the results from this analysis are encouraging next the hypothesis is tested using the methodology of altonji 1982 the results from this analysis are not generally favorable to the hypothesis finally an ad hoc test of whether the bonus should be considered a form of wage payment is nested in the test of the intertemporal substitution hypothesis with the result that the bonus does not appear to elicit the same labor supply behavior as the base wage

changes in college skills and the rise in the college wage premium the college wage premium for new labor market entrants rose sharply during the 1980s we ask how much of this change arose from changes in the skill level of the typical college graduate we find that skills attained prior to college as measured by standardized test scores and high school grades had no effect on the change in the college wage premium for men in contrast the returns to math ability rose considerably for women failing to account for math skills thus substantially overstates the growth in the female college wage premium skills acquired in college as reflected in the distribution of students across majors had important effects on the relative wages of men the trend away from low skill subjects such as education and toward high skill subjects such as engineering accounts for one fourth of the rise in the male college wage premium

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

the demand for and return to education when education outcomes are uncertain this article treats education as a sequential choice that is made under uncertainty a simple model is used to explore the effects of ability high school preparation preferences for schooling the borrowing rate and ex post payoffs to college on the probability of various post secondary college outcomes and the ex ante return to starting college the model motivates an empirical method of accounting for uncertainty about educational outcomes and for nonlinearity in the relationship between years of education and earnings when estimating the expected return to the first year of college

higher education enrolment in bangladesh does the wage premium matter abstractthis paper empirically examines the decisions of individuals to enrol in a course of tertiary education in bangladesh focussing on the period 1999 to 2009 of particular interest is whethe

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women

the varied economic returns to postsecondary education new evidence from the class of 1972 this paper estimates the returns to postsecondary education using the national longitudinal survey of the class of 1972 with earnings measured at about age 32 the results are based on transcripts rather than self reports about the amount of education allowing postsecondary education to be more precisely described than usual the results confirm the well known returns to b a degrees other credentials associate degrees and certificates for women also lead to higher earnings and wage rates though indirectly these credentials gain individuals access to jobs where they accumulate more experience and on the job training but provide no further advantage once experience and ojt are controlled most individuals who enroll in postsecondary education but fail to complete credentials have no higher earnings than high school graduates the effects of experience high school achievement and family background are familiar the results indicate a fundamental difference between labor markets for college graduates and the sub baccalaureate labor market