Testimony of Frederick L. Feinstein Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Testimony_Feinstein_092994.pdf: 91 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The Relative Economic Importance of Academic, Psychological and Behavioural Attributes Developed on Chilhood

This paper makes use of the substantial information about the psychological and behavioural development of children by age ten in the 1970 Cohort to predict later, economic outcomes, namely qualifications, employment and earnings. It is found that this previously unobserved individual heterogeneity has very substantial implications for the labour market. The returns to education are not significantly reduced by this omission bias but there is evidence of substantial returns to the production of non-academic ability. The paper also finds that different age ten abilities and attributes have implications for different adult outcomes so that human capital production should not be considered by economists as a simple one-dimensional process. Age ten conduct disorder predicts male adult unemployment particularly well but it is self-esteem that predicts male earnings. For women the locus of control variable is particularly important. Finally, whereas age ten maths ability is a good predictor of subsequent educational development for children from high SES families, reading is the stronger predictor for children from low SES groups. The implications of these results for education are developed. Parental attitudes are much more important than raw indices of social class for the explanation of the age ten scores. Schooling curriculum may be important.Human capital, wages, unemployment, education

Pre-school Educational Inequality? British Children in the 1970 Cohort

This paper considers mobility in and explanation of the position of children in the distribution of ability at different ages. Using the sub-samples of the BCS Cohort, it is found that 42 month ability rank provides a fairly stable guide to position in the distribution at age ten and that for girls, even the 22 month score is fairly stable. The paper then considers the question of the association of ability rank with the social background of children. It is found that children of women with degrees are substantially higher in the distribution than other children even at 22 months. By 42 months SES is also important, becoming still more important by age ten. A forecast equation for household income is developed. This is also found to be strongly associated with pre-school ability rank.

Microwave flaw detector Patent

Surface defect detection by reflected microwave radiation patter

Nondestructive testing of microtab welds

Introduction of sinusoidal signal across welded structure to determine reliability of integrated circuit connections is discussed. In-phase frequencies and quadrature frequency functions are used to evaluate weld reliability. Schematic diagram of test equipment and components is provided

Sheepskin or Prozac: The Causal Effect of Education on Mental Health

Mental illness is associated with large costs to individuals and society. Education improves various health outcomes but little work has been done on mental illness. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effect of education on mental health, we rely on a rich longitudinal dataset that contains health information from childhood to adulthood and thus allow us to control for fixed effects in mental health. We measure two health outcomes: malaise score and depression and estimate the extensive and intensive margins of education on mental health using various estimators. For all estimators, accounting for the endogeneity of education augments its protecting effect on mental health. We find that the effect of education is greater at mid-level of qualifications, for women and for individuals at greater risk of mental illness. The effects of education are observed at all ages, additionally education also reduces the transition to depression. These results suggest substantial returns to education in term of improved mental health.Returns to education, mental health

Attainment in Secondary School

This paper studies attainment in secondary schools. We estimate an education production function in which attainment depends upon parental inputs, peer group inputs and schooling inputs. We find that the most powerful parental input is parental interest in children, as assessed by teachers. We find a strong peer group effect. The school pupil-teacher ratio does not enter significantly. The only strongly endogenous variable is initial attainment. We argue that this is due to measurement error. There is some evidence that parental interest is endogenous but we do not find peer group variables to be so.

Pre-School Education and Attainment in the NCDS and BCS

This paper considers the effect of how children pass time before entrance to school on attainment in primary school. We find in NCDS data that children perform marginally better at seven and eleven if they spent time with their mother, or at a pre-school, rather than in informal care. This holds when one controls for parental education, social class, and assessed parental interest in the child's education, as well as the quality of the peer group. In the BCS, however, time spent in nurseries effected no improvement in maths at ten as compared to time in informal care and pre-school children were performing much worse in reading. This worse performance was traceable to reduced vocabulary at five. Pre-school children were more advanced in copying at five relative to children in informal care but, while copying is a good predictor of scores in both maths and reading at ten, this advancement had been offset by then.