Disruptive Events during the High School Years and Educational Attainment

We use data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey to examine the effects of family structure and school changing on attendance during high school and educational continuation through college entry. We find that both family structure and changing schools are associated with more attendance problems during high school and with school continuation decisions after high school. The results also show that family structure, changing schools, and attendance patterns play important roles in shaping the educational attainment of individuals, including their postsecondary educational experiences.

Trends in AFDC Participation Rates: The Implications for Welfare Reform

Congress justified the recent reform of federal welfare policy in part by citing the increase in the AFDC caseload since the late 1960s. The caseload, i.e., the number of families using AFDC, is determined by the number of families eligible to participate and by the proportion of these families who use the program. Yet the debate over reforming welfare rarely paid attention to the latter—the participation rates among female heads of families. While the number of cases changed little during the early to mid-1980s, the percentage of families with single female heads who used AFDC declined. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, both caseloads and participation rates increased. This paper documents the changes in participation rates since the mid-1980s, racial and ethnic differences in participation rates, and factors that might be associated with these changes. The only major trend that consistently parallels the changes in participation rates is the trend in unemployment. Existing data do not permit us to conclude that unemployment is the major determinant of participation rates. If unemployment drives participation rates, however, the recent changes in welfare legislation may create serious problems for many female heads of families in periods of high unemployment.

Duration of Public Assistance Receipt: Is Welfare a Trap?

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to answer two questions about the effects of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program: (1) Does the length of time that one receives AFDC affect the likelihood of permanently leaving AFDC? (2) What personal and family characteristics are associated with the long-term receipt of AFDC? The answer to the first question is that the likelihood of permanently leaving AFDC decreases with the length of time that individuals receive benefits, after adjustments for other measured and unmeasured attributes of individuals and their families. The answer to the second question is that not having a high school diploma, never having married, having more than two children, and having little work experience are associated with long-term receipt. Many of the recipients who will reach the five-year limit imposed by the new federal legislation are in situations that make it difficult for them to support themselves and their families without public assistance.

LAND AND POPULATION ON THE INDIAN RESERVATION OF WISCONSIN: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

The historical relationship between land use and population change among Wisconsin's Indian groups has been strikingly emblematic of the larger American Indian population. The ingredients of this rich relationship include the state's natural resource base, as well as the major engines of demographic change, namely fertility, mortality, and migration. In addition, federal policies have played a critical role in mediating this relationship. These policies have figured prominently since the earliest contact between Europeans and Wisconsin Indians and have continued to exert substantial influence. This paper discusses the past, present, and future relationship between the land and the state's Indian populations, paying particular attention to reservation populations. The reciprocal relationship between land and population among Wisconsin's Indians has evolved in an environment of changing social and political forces. Hence, the paper treats these issues in a chronological manner. It begins by reviewing the early period of contact between Europeans and Indians in the area known today as Wisconsin. Then, it discusses the creation of the state of Wisconsin and various Indian reservations, as well as their implications for Indian populations in the state. Next, it discusses federal land policies of the 19th and 20th centuries, and their effects on Wisconsin reservation populations. Finally, it describes current land tenure issues and the implications of future population growth.Indian reservations -- Government policy -- Wisconsin -- History, Land use -- Wisconsin, Indians of North America -- Land tenure -- Wisconsin, Indians of North America -- Government policy -- Wisconsin, Indians of North America -- Wisconsin -- Government relations -- History, Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use,

Labour Market Flexibility, Wages and Incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s..

This paper provides an overview of how African labour markets have performed in the 1990s. It is argued that the failure of African labour markets to create good paying jobs has resulted in excess labour supply in the form of either open unemployment or a growing self-employment sector. One explanation for this outcome is a lack of labour market 'flexibility' keeping formal sector wages above their equilibrium level and restricting job creation. We identify three attributes of labour market flexibility. First, whether real wages decline over time; secondly, the tendency for wages to adjust in the face of unemployment; and thirdly, the extent of wage differentials between sectors and/or firms of various size. Recent research shows that real wages in Africa during the 1990s may have been more downwardly flexible than previously thought and have been surprisingly responsive to unemployment rates, yet large wage differentials between formal and informal sector firms remain. This third sense of the term 'inflexibility' can explain a common factor across diverse African economies--the high income divide between those working in large firms and those not. Those working in the thriving self-employment sector in Ghana have something in common with the unemployed in South Africa--both have very low income opportunities relative to those in large firms.

Does Doing an Apprenticeship Pay Off? Evidence from Ghana

In Ghana there is a highly developed apprenticeship system where young men and women undertake sector-specific private training, which yields skills used primarily in the informal sector. In this paper we use a 2006 urban based household survey with detailed questions on the background, training and earnings of workers in both wage and self-employment to ask whether apprenticeship pays off. We show that apprenticeship is by far the most important institution providing training and is undertaken primarily by those with junior high school or lower levels of education. The summary statistics indicate that those who have done an apprenticeship earn much less than those who have not. This suggests that endogenous selection into the apprenticeship system is important, and we take several measures to address this issue. We find a significant amount of heterogeneity in the returns to apprenticeship across education. Our most conservative estimates imply that for currently employed people, who did apprenticeships but have no formal education, the training increases their earnings by 50%. However this declines as education levels rise. We argue that our results are consistent with those who enter apprenticeship with no education having higher ability than those who enter with more education.Apprenticeship; Africa; Training; Treatment; Control function

Learning & Earning in Africa: Where are the Returns to Education High?

This paper investigates the role of learning - through formal schooling and time spent in the labor market - in explaining labor market outcomes of urban workers in Ghana and Tanzania. We investigate these issues using a new data set measuring incomes of both formal sector wage workers and the self-employed in the informal sector. In both countries we find significant, convex returns to education and large earnings differentials between sectors when we pool the data and do not control for selection. In Ghana there is a particularly steep age-earnings profile. We investigate how far a Harris-Todaro model of market segmentation or a Roy model of selection can explain the patterns observed in the data. We find highly significant differences across occupations and important effects from selection in both countries. The data is consistent with a pattern by which higher ability individuals queue for the high wage formal sector jobs such that the age earnings profile is convex for the self-employed in Ghana once we control for selection. The returns to education are far higher in the large firm sector than in others and in this sector they are linear not convex. In both countries there is clear evidence of convexity in the returns to education for the self-employed and here the average returns are low.

The Natural Right of Property

This Article offers a critical examination of Eric Claeys’s argument for natural property rights, focusing in particular on the questions of self-ownership and the so-called “Lockean proviso.” It argues that while Claeys is generally on the right track in his argument for natural property rights, he errs in omitting a self-ownership argument, some version of which is necessary for a proper naturalistic account of property, and that the Lockean proviso is neither necessary for such an account nor defensible in its own right. I conclude that the concerns animating the Lockean proviso argument are adequately dealt with by an alternative argument: that one has a right to equal participation in an existing property rights scheme