Labor Force Earnings Research Articles

Education's Effects on Individual Life Chances and On Development: An Overview

ABSTRACT This paper estimates the effects of human capital skills largely created through education on life's chances over the life cycle. Qualifications as a measure of these skills affect earnings, and schooling affects private and social non-market benefits beyond earnings. Private non-market benefits include better own-health, child health, spousal health, infant mortality, longevity, fertility, household efficiency, asset management and happiness. Social benefits include increased democratisation, civil rights, political stability, reduced crime, lower prison, health and welfare costs, and new ideas. Individual benefits enhance community-wide development. New ‘narrow’ social rates of return using UK Labour Force earnings correct for institutional costs, longitudinal trends and ability. The paper's objective, however, is to estimate these earnings plus non-market outcomes comprehensively without overlaps and also relative to costs. Non-market outcomes are measured by averaging regression coefficients from published studies that meet scientific standards. New UK ‘narrow’ social rates of return average 12.1 per cent for short-cycle and 13.6 per cent for bachelor's programmes. Augmented with non-market effects on life chances, they are over twice that. Short degrees are found effective for regional development and have potential for developing countries.

Learning to do well or learning to do good? Estimating the effects of schooling on civic engagement, social cohesion, and labor market outcomes in the presence of endowments

Although some point to the large effects of schooling on civic engagement (usually measured in terms of volunteering and participation in civic organizations) and social cohesion (usually measured in terms of social networks and relationship quality), the effects of schooling on social outcomes have not been estimated with the same rigor as the effects of schooling on labor-market outcomes, such as earnings. In particular, previous research has failed to consider (i) the many potential and often unobserved confounding factors (“endowments”) influencing both schooling and social outcomes, including family upbringing, innate characteristics, and personality, and (ii) the ways in which schooling pushes individuals in multiple directions simultaneously, including toward greater social engagement, but also toward more independent and market-driven pursuits. Using samples of unrelated persons, ordinary siblings, and identical twins, this study explores the effects of schooling on measures of civic engagement and social relationships, as well as labor-force earnings and labor-force participation. The siblings models reveal a more complex picture than typically suggested by standard individual estimates. On one hand, the results reveal a robust positive effect of schooling on earnings: well-schooled persons work more and earn more, albeit not as much as associations without control for endowments suggest. On the other hand, the results reveal more tenuous and occasionally negative effects of schooling on social outcomes. The effects of schooling on volunteering and membership in civic organizations, for example, disappear almost entirely with control for endowments. Also, within-identical-twins models reverse the positive effects of schooling on reports of support from friends, family, and coworkers. These results may reflect the tension schooling creates between market and non-market commitments, as well as between independence and interpersonal reliability. Schooling may, indeed, induce some pro-social behaviors, but schooling allows individuals choices of whether to pursue more personal interests as well.

Annual productivity costs due to cervical cancer mortality in the United States

Several studies have estimated annual US health care costs associated with cervical cancer; however, few data are available on the corresponding annual loss in women's productive earnings resulting from premature mortality owing to cervical cancer. The present study estimates annual productivity costs associated with cervical cancer mortality in the United States. An analytic framework was developed for estimating the lost earnings that would have accrued during 2000 for women dying from cervical cancer during that and earlier years, who would have otherwise been alive and working in 2000. The following data from publicly available sources were gathered and analyzed for US women on an age-specific basis: 1) annual number of cervical cancer deaths during 2000 and preceding years; 2) estimated probability of otherwise being alive during 2000, for women dying from cervical cancer during the period 1935-2000; 3) labor force participation rates in 2000; and 4) mean annual earnings in 2000. Overall, it was estimated that there were 130,377 women who would have been alive during 2000 had they not died from cervical cancer during that or a previous year. Over 75% of these women died before age 60, with >25% dying prior to age 40, and it was estimated that 37,594 (29%) of these women would have had labor force earnings during 2000. The total productivity loss in 2000 owing to cervical cancer mortality was estimated at $1.3 billion. The annual productivity loss for cervical cancer estimated in the present analysis is several times higher than recent estimates of the annual US direct medical costs associated with cervical cancer ($300-$400 million).

Labor force earnings and college choice of young women: An examination of selectivity bias and comparative advantage

A generalized approach to selectivity bias is derived and applied to the joint decision of college attendance and labor force participation for young women. The results here indicate that these decisions are strongly correlated. Moreover, the estimated rate of return to college education is found to be very sensitive to this correlation. This fact suggests that ignoring the relationship between these two decisions leads to rate of return estimates that are biased downward for those who attend college and biased upward for those who do not attend college.

Une approche de la rémunération et du coût de la force de travail familiale agricole

According to the neoclassical approach, the income of family farming business is thought of as a sum of production factors being paid for. The limits of this approach, apart from those shown by the general critics of neoclassical distribution theory, are revealed in its own results, which emphazises that there is no' normal remuneration of production factors in agriculture. This may be a first clue indicating the domination bared*by peasantry, which would consist in farmers being paid only for the use of their labour force, when selling their production. Labour force earnings may thus be figured out according to family levy i.e. the sums that farmers withdraw from their receipts for family consumption. On the basis of this assumption, the author tends to figure out, for the whole of the French agricultural sector, the total spending s on the labour force involved between 1960 and 1975.