Rethinking the transition process in Syria: constitution, participation and gender equality

A just and sustainable peace for Syria can only be attained through the equal participation of women\u2019s rights defenders at the negotiation table and throughout the transitional process. Understanding the legal framework within which such participation takes place \u2013 and the challenges of promoting women\u2019s rights through a gender-responsive constitution \u2013 is crucial. This publication, resulting from a collaboration between Euromed Feminist Initiative and the University of Padova, builds on the knowledge of academics and advocates, shedding new insights on those challenges. It aims at supporting institutional efforts being made to guarantee women\u2019s participation in the Syrian reconstruction, as well as advocacy initiatives carried out to ensure women\u2019s participation in political and economic decision-making in the country\u2019s future

Calculation of LTC Premiums based on direct estimates of transition probabilities

In this paper we model the life-history of LTC patients using a Markovian multi-state model in order to calculate premiums for a given LTC-plan. Instead of estimating the transition intensities in this model we use the approach suggested by Andersen et al. (2003) for a direct estimation of the transition probabilities. Based on the Aalen-Johansen estimator, an almost unbiased estimator for the transition matrix of a Markovian multi-state model, we calculate so-called pseudo-values, known from Jackknife methods. Further, we assume that the relationship between these pseudo-values and the covariates of our data are given by a GLM with the logit as link-function. Since the GLMs do not allow for correlation between successive observations we use instead the "Generalized Estimating Equations" (GEEs) to estimate the parameters of our regression model. The approach is illustrated using a representative sample from a German LTC portfolio

The shaping of higher education in the United States and New England.

Education ; Public schools

Long-Run Changes in the U.S. Wage Structure: Narrowing, Widening, Polarizing

The U.S. wage structure evolved across the last century: narrowing from 1910 to 1950, fairly stable in the 1950s and 1960s, widening rapidly during the 1980s, and “polarizing” since the late 1980s. We document the spectacular rise of U.S. wage inequality after 1980 and place recent changes into a century-long historical perspective to understand the sources of change. The majority of the increase in wage inequality since 1980 can be accounted for by rising educational wage differentials, just as a substantial part of the decrease in wage inequality in the earlier era can be accounted for by decreasing educational wage differentials. Although skill-biased technological change has generated rapid growth in the relative demand for more-educated workers for at least the past century, increases in the supply of skills, from rising educational attainment of the U.S. work force, more than kept pace for most of the twentieth century. Since 1980, however, a sharp decline in skill supply growth driven by a slowdown in the rise of educational attainment of successive U.S. born cohorts has been a major factor in the surge in educational wage differentials. Polarization set in during the late 1980s with employment shifts into high- and low-wage jobs at the expense of the middle leading to rapidly rising upper tail wage inequality but modestly falling lower tail wage inequality.

The "Virtues" of the Past: Education in the First Hundred Years of the New Republic

By the mid-nineteenth century school enrollment rates in the United States exceeded those of any other nation in the world and by the early twentieth century the United States had accomplished mass education at all levels. No country was able to close the gap until the last quarter of the twentieth century. For much of its history U.S. education was spurred by a set of 'virtues,' the most important of which were public provision by small fiscally independent districts, public funding, secular control, gender neutrality, open access, a forgiving system, and an academic curriculum. The outcomes of the virtues were an enormous diffusion of educational institutions and the early spread of mass education. America borrowed its educational institutions from Europe but added to them in ways that served to enhance competition and openness. The virtues of long ago need not be the virtues of today, and they also need not have been virtuous in all places and at all times in the past. In this essay we explore the historical origins of these virtues and find that almost all were in place in the period before the American Civil War.

The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity

Current concern with relationships among particular technologies, capital, and the wage structure motivates this study of the origins of technology-skill complementarity in manufacturing. We offer evidence of the existence of technology-skill and capital-skill (relative) complementarities from 1909 to 1929, and suggest that they were associated with continuous-process and batch methods and the adoption of electric motors. Industries that used more capital per worker and a greater proportion of their horsepower in the form of purchased electricity employed relatively more educated blue-collar workers in 1940 and paid their blue-collar workers substantially more from 1909 to 1929. We also infer capital-skill complementarity using the wage-bill for non-production workers and find that the relationship was as large from 1909-19 as it has been recently. Finally, we link our findings to those on the high-school movement (1910 to 1940). The rapid increase in the supply of skills from 1910 to 1940 may have prevented rising inequality with technological change.

Education and Income in the Early 20th Century: Evidence from the Prairies

We present the first estimates of the returns to years of schooling before 1940 using a large sample of men and women, employed in a variety of sectors and occupations, from the Iowa State Census of 1915. We find that the returns to a year of high school, and to a year of college, were substantial in 1915 - about 11 percent for all males and in excess of 12 percent for young males. Some of the return to years of high school and college arose because more education allowed individuals to enter lucrative white-collar jobs. But we also find sizable educational wage differentials within the white- and blue-collar sectors. Returns to education above the 'common school' grades were substantial even within the agricultural sector. Given the high overall rate of return to secondary schooling, it is no wonder that the 'high school movement' took root in America around 1910, even in agricultural areas such as Iowa. Census data for 1940, 1950, and 1960 are used to show that returns to years of schooling were greater in 1915 than in 1940. We conclude that the return to education decreased sometime between 1915 and 1940 and then declined again during the 1940s.

The Returns to Skill in the United States across the Twentieth Century

Economic inequality is higher today than it has been since 1939, as measured by both the wage structure and wealth inequality. But the comparison between 1939 and 1999 is largely made out of necessity; the 1940 U.S. population census was the first to inquire of wage and salary income and education. We address what the returns to skill were prior to 1940 and piece together the first century-long history of skill premiums, the dispersion of the wage structure, and returns to formal schooling. We use the 1915 Iowa State Census, a remarkable and unique document, as well as several less-obscure but untapped reports. Using all of these sources, we find that the wage structure narrowed at several moments in the first half of the 20th century, not just in the 1940s, both coinciding with major economic disruptions brought about by war. The returns to education were in fact higher in 1914 than in 1939, and the enormous expansion in secondary schooling beginning in the 1910s was a contributing factor to the decrease in educational returns. Inequality and the returns to education across the entire century, therefore, first declined before their more recent and steep ascent.

The Race between Education and Technology: The Evolution of U.S. Educational Wage Differentials, 1890 to 2005

U.S. educational and occupational wage differentials were exceptionally high at the dawn of the twentieth century and then decreased in several stages over the next eight decades. But starting in the early 1980s the labor market premium to skill rose sharply and by 2005 the college wage premium was back at its 1915 level. The twentieth century contains two inequality tales: one declining and one rising. We use a supply-demand-institutions framework to understand the factors that produced these changes from 1890 to 2005. We find that strong secular growth in the relative demand for more educated workers combined with fluctuations in the growth of relative skill supplies go far to explain the long-run evolution of U.S. educational wage differentials. An increase in the rate of growth of the relative supply of skills associated with the high school movement starting around 1910 played a key role in narrowing educational wage differentials from 1915 to 1980. The slowdown in the growth of the relative supply of college workers starting around 1980 was a major reason for the surge in the college wage premium from 1980 to 2005. Institutional factors were important at various junctures, especially during the 1940s and the late 1970s.