Christopher Dougherty

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.

The Marriage Earnings Premium as a Distributed Fixed Effect.

Wage equations using cross-sectional data typically find an earnings premium in excess of 10 percent for married men. One leading hypothesis for the premium is that marriage facilitates specialization that enables married men to become more productive than single men. Another is that the premium is attributable to an unobserved fixed effect, married men possessing qualities that are valued in the labor market as well as the marriage market. This paper suggests that the premium is attributable to an unobserved time-distributed fixed effect that emerges and grows with the approach of marriage and continues to grow for some years after marriage. A similar distributed fixed effect is found in the case of women, but it is smaller and declines after a few years of marriage. The results appear to cast doubt on the specialization hypothesis.

The specification of earnings functions : tests and implications

Many studies of the returns to education have relied on the Mincerian specification for the earnings function. This study uses data from a random sample of adult male workers of the 1980 Brazilian census to test the empirical validity of the assumptions embodied in this specification, with the following findings: the evidence supports the assumption that the appropriate regressand is the logarithm of earnings, but it does not support the implicit assumption that there is no interaction between the effects of education and work experience, or the assumption that a single function is appropriate for modelling both early and mature earnings. The authors find that the Mincerian specification leads to upwardly biased estimates of the returns to education, particularly at the primary level.

Financing training: issues and options

Appraises the scope for cost‐ effective government intervention into the mobilization of resources for training, examining measures catalytic in nature as well as direct interventions. Asserts that economic recession and shrinking government revenues have led to a reconsideration of the role played by the state in training provision and to a growing acknowledgement and appreciation of the role of the private sector. Suggests that although the documentation is incomplete, the government is, and has always been, the junior partner. Discusses how training is financed by the private sector. Analyses situations where privately financed training provision may be sub‐optimal in scale and where there are grounds for government intervention. Addresses the issues of how best to provide financial incentives and mobilize the resources required for financial intervention.

Measuring the Cost of Misallocation of Investment in Education

This paper analyzes the welfare loss associated with the misallocation of resources within the education sector. After a theoretical discussion of the different methods of measuring this misallocation cost and the problems involved, estimates for 17 countries are presented. In contrast to the typically negligible estimates yielded by previous such studies of other sectors of the economy, it was found that the potential gain from improving the allocation of resources in education may be expected to be substantial, often reaching the size of the education budget itself.

Attendance at ante-natal classes and clinics, medical intervention during birth and implications for ‘natural childbirth’

Abstract A sample of 1,000 women who gave birth at term in a London teaching hospital were investigated to establish, from the records, the pattern of attendance at ante-natal clinics and classes. The variables associated with good attendance confirm and extend previous research and include parity, age, ethnicity, marital status, occupational status and tobacco habit. The relationship between good attendance, medical interventions and other outcomes was found to be less marked than in previous studies. Statistical analysis, using ‘logit’, to control for linkage between variables, suggests that the only marked association with outcomes is that frequent class attenders are much more likely to breast feed. The implications are discussed in terms of a definition of natural childbirth.

Occupational breaks, their incidence and implications for training provision Case‐study evidence from the national longitudinal survey of youth

Detailed education, employment and training histories have been constructed for a cohort of 440 male respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The employment histories show that most respondents without college degrees have experienced at least one occupational break since entering the labour force. The training histories show that most of those in employment in 1992 have had no formal training for their current occupations. An assessment of whether those who received training before or on entering the labour force have subsequently had more stable employment histories than those who have not shows that this is true of college‐level vocational education but not of high school vocational education or training received in vocational/technical institutes. These findings suggest that the comprehensive provision of entry‐level training for those not college‐bound, as advocated by those promoting vocational education in high schools, cannot be justified in terms of labour market outcomes.