Ernst W. Stromsdorfer

The Human Capital Effect of General Education Development Certificates on Low Income Women

This study examines the impacts of the General Equivalency Diploma (GED) certificate and other secondary and post-secondary credentials on labor market outcomes for women. It uses data from the NLSY Mother and Children file and the Washington State Family Income Study (FIS). Correcting for sample selection and endogeneity bias of welfare recipiency, we find that one cannot distinguish between secondary dropouts, GED recipients, and secondary graduates in hours of work. Results on hourly wage rates are mixed. For the FIS sample, GED recipients, secondary graduates, and secondary dropouts earn the same wage. For the NLSY, GED recipients fare better than dropouts, but worse than secondary graduates. Job experience explains the wage gap between GED recipients and graduates, but its explanatory power is dominated by controlling for years of education or AFQT. Differences in years of education and AFQT scores are responsible for the observed wage differences among GED recipients, secondary graduates, and secondary dropouts.

The youth entitlement demonstration: subsidized employment with a schooling requirement.

The YIEPP offered a minimum wage job, part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer, to 16-19-year-olds from low-income households who had not as yet graduated from high school and who were enrolled in school. Our finding of large positive employment effects for this population is strong evidence that the unemployment of these youths is largely involuntary, due to demand deficiency at the minimum wage. We also find small positive school enrollment effects, and an employment displacement rate of 31.6 percent-that is, 31.6 percent of subsidized employment would have been available for the target population even in the absence of the program.

Economic Returns to Vocational and Comprehensive High School Graduates

This study compares the costs of vocational and comprehensive secondary education and the labor market performances of graduates of these two types of high schools who did not attend college. The measurements of the labor market performances are in terms of earnings and employment. The data were obtained from the responses to 2,767 mail questionnaires sent in 1966 and 1967 to graduates of high schools in three major cities. Multiple regression analysis is used to measure the net effect of curriculum on the labor market performances for the two types of graduates. The analysis, based on six-year labor market experiences of high school graduates who did not attend college, suggests that the monetary returns of vocational-technical graduates are higher than those of comprehensive graduates.

Determinants of Economic Success in Retraining the Unemployed: The West Virginia Experience

The economic costs and benefits of government-sponsored retraining of the long-term unemployed in West Virginia from 1959 through 1964 are examined and analyzed in this study of the post-training labor market experience of 879 Trainees, Nontrainees, and other groups. A multivariate analysis was used. When the effects of age, sex, education, and other socioeconomic and labor market variables were held constant, the net effect of retraining on employment and before-tax earnings for the study sample was shown to be positive and statistically significant. Average monetary benefits exceeded average monetary costs during the 18-month post-training period.

Labor force adjustment to structural displacement in a local labor market

Presents quantitative content to the discussion of labor force transformation. Process of labor force adjustment; Major costs and risks involved in labor force adjustment for both the individual and society; Comparison of expected capital values of the highest and lowest investment alternatives with expected capital values of the profiles, individual examination. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)