Bildung und Demokratie: Schafft Bildung sozialen Zusammenhalt?

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Teach your children well: The dynamics of the distribution of educational attainment in Europe

The importance of human capital in the form of education as a determinant of economic development has been highlighted in the theoretical and empirical economic growth literature. Less attention has been paid to the distributional characteristics of educational attainment within and across age groups, as well as between males and females. Exploiting new Age-structured data on educational attainment, we present an analysis of the degree of equality in the distribution of education in Europe over the last decades, both within and across generations. We highlight the differences existing across European regions and the changes experienced over time, as well as those implied by projected trajectories of educational attainment in the future

The Role of Age and Gender in Educational Expansion: The South Asian Experience in the Global Context

This paper provides an integrated analysis of within- and between-group specific trends in educational inequality. Using the IIASA/VID dataset of populations by age, sex and level of education, I calculate education Gini coefficients and decompose the overall degree of educational inequality into age, sex and within-group components for 171 countries from 1970 to 2010. I analyse the relative relevance of these components for inequality reduction and investigate the distributional outcomes of educational expansion. I use South Asia for a case study as countries in the region are among the most unequal in the world regarding their distributions of education between and within population groups. Generally, I find that equalization between males and females, younger and older cohorts as well as within these subgroups of the population has significantly contributed to declining educational inequality over the observed sample period around the globe. But the relative role of these components fluctuates in the process of educational expansion. First, as improvements are initiated by enhancing the educational opportunities of the youth, the gap between cohorts widens in transition phases but vanishes thereafter. Second, gaps between sexes have been reduced but are predicted to widen again if either males or females are the first to enter higher education levels. To a lesser extent, this is also true for gaps within population subgroups which can be due to the ethnic background or the social and economic status of people. Instead of a Kuznets-curve relation, I thus find evidence for education inequality to evolve in waves as education expands

Age-Specific Education Inequality, Education Mobility and Income Growth

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that countries which are able to reduce the inequality of educational attainment of young cohorts over time tend to have higher growth rates of income per capita. This effect is additional to that implied by the accumulation of human capital and implies that policies aiming at providing broad-based access to schooling have returns in terms of economic growth that go beyond those achieved by increasing average educational attainment.Series: WWWforEurop

Education and Social Mobility in Europe: Levelling the Playing Field for Europe's Children and Fuelling its Economy

The persistence of socioeconomic outcomes across generations acts as a barrier to a society's ability to exploit its resources efficiently. In order to derive policy measures which aim at accelerating intergenerational mobility, we review the existent body of research on the causes, effects and the measurement of intergenerational mobility. We also present recent empirical works which study intergenerational mobility in Europe, around the Globe, and its relevance for economic growth. We recommend four policy measures to reduce the negative impacts of intergenerational persistence in economic outcomes: universal and high-quality child care and pre-school programs; later school tracking and increased access to vocational training to reduce skill mismatch and facilitate technological development; integration programs for migrants; and simultaneous investment in schooling and later social security programs.Series: WWWforEurop

Explaining Income Inequality Trends in Countries: An Integrated Approach

What can we say about systematic global and broad regional trends in the drivers of income inequality in countries? In order to address this question, this work takes an integrated approach in that it looks at a broad set of countries and examines a broad set of determinants. We thus model technological progress, non-resource trade flows, the education distribution, labor vs. capital income as well as heterogeneity in public social spending and analyze the relation to three income inequality measures in Advanced and Developing Economies. Our findings indicate the main factors adding to increasing inequality globally to be technological progress and trade with high-income countries. Trade with low-income countries, public spending on health and decreasing shares of people without any formal education, on the other hand, had significant equalizing effects on the income distribution. The estimated effects of the education distribution, public education spending and the labor income share are highly region specific and thus indicate the importance of disentangling global effects.Series: INEQ Working Paper Serie

Explaining Income Inequality Trends in Countries: An Integrated Approach

What can we say about systematic global and broad regional trends in the drivers of income inequality in countries? In order to address this question, this work takes an integrated approach in that it looks at a broad set of countries and examines a broad set of determinants. We thus model technological progress, non-resource trade flows, the education distribution, labor vs. capital income as well as heterogeneity in public social spending and analyze the relation to three income inequality measures in Advanced and Developing Economies. Our findings indicate the main factors adding to increasing inequality globally to be technological progress and trade with high-income countries. Trade with low-income countries, public spending on health and decreasing shares of people without any formal education, on the other hand, had significant equalizing effects on the income distribution. The estimated effects of the education distribution, public education spending and the labor income share are highly region specific and thus indicate the importance of disentangling global effects.Series: INEQ Working Paper Serie

Simple, but Not Branched, Plasmodesmata Allow the Nonspecific Trafficking of Proteins in Developing Tobacco Leaves

AbstractLeaves undergo a sink–source transition during which a physiological change occurs from carbon import to export. In sink leaves, biolistic bombardment of plasmids encoding GFP-fusion proteins demonstrated that proteins with an Mr up to 50 kDa could move freely through plasmodesmata. During the sink–source transition, the capacity to traffic proteins decreased substantially and was accompanied by a developmental switch from simple to branched forms of plasmodesmata. Inoculation of sink leaves with a movement protein-defective virus showed that virally expressed GFP, but not viral RNA, was capable of trafficking between sink cells during infection. Contrary to dogma that plasmodesmata have a size exclusion limit below 1 kDa, the data demonstrate that nonspecific “macromolecular trafficking” is a general feature of simple plasmodesmata in sink leaves

Cardiac miRNA expression during the development of chronic anthracycline-induced cardiomyopathy using an experimental rabbit model

Background: Anthracycline cardiotoxicity is a well-known complication of cancer treatment, and miRNAs have emerged as a key driver in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to investigate the expression of miRNAs in the myocardium in early and late stages of chronic anthracycline induced cardiotoxicity to determine whether this expression is associated with the severity of cardiac damage.Method: Cardiotoxicity was induced in rabbits via daunorubicin administration (daunorubicin, 3 mg/kg/week; for five and 10 weeks), while the control group received saline solution. Myocardial miRNA expression was first screened using TaqMan Advanced miRNA microfluidic card assays, after which 32 miRNAs were selected for targeted analysis using qRT-PCR.Results: The first subclinical signs of cardiotoxicity (significant increase in plasma cardiac troponin T) were observed after 5 weeks of daunorubicin treatment. At this time point, 10 miRNAs (including members of the miRNA-34 and 21 families) showed significant upregulation relative to the control group, with the most intense change observed for miRNA-1298-5p (29-fold change, p < 0.01). After 10 weeks of daunorubicin treatment, when a further rise in cTnT was accompanied by significant left ventricle systolic dysfunction, only miR-504-5p was significantly (p < 0.01) downregulated, whereas 10 miRNAs were significantly upregulated relative to the control group; at this time-point, the most intense change was observed for miR-34a-5p (76-fold change). Strong correlations were found between the expression of multiple miRNAs (including miR-34 and mir-21 family and miR-1298-5p) and quantitative indices of toxic damage in both the early and late phases of cardiotoxicity development. Furthermore, plasma levels of miR-34a-5p were strongly correlated with the myocardial expression of this miRNA.Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that describes alterations in miRNA expression in the myocardium during the transition from subclinical, ANT-induced cardiotoxicity to an overt cardiotoxic phenotype; we also revealed how these changes in miRNA expression are strongly correlated with quantitative markers of cardiotoxicity