INTERGENERATIONAL PROGRESS IN EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT WHEN INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE REALLY MATTERS: A CASE STUDY OF FRANCO-AMERICANS VS. FRNECH-SPEAKING QUEBECKERS

Using U.S. and Canadian census data I exploit the massive out migration of approximately 1 million French-Canadians who moved mainly to New England between 1865 and 1930 to look at how the educationalattainment and enrollment patterns of their descendants compare with those of same aged French-speaking Quebeckers. Data from the 1971 (1970) Canadian (U.S.) censuses reveal that New England born residents who had French as their mother tongue enjoyed a considerable advantage in terms of educational attainment. I attribute this large discrepancy to their exposure to the U.S. public school system which had no equivalent in Quebec until the late sixties. This result is even more remarkable given the alleged negative selection out of Quebec and the fact that Franco-Americans were fairly successful in replicating the same educational institutions as the ones existing in Quebec. Turning to the 2001 (2000) Canadian (U.S.) censuses, I find strong signs that the gap has subsided for the younger aged individuals. In fact, contrary to 30 years earlier, young Quebeckers in 2001 had roughly the same number of years of schooling and were at least as likely to have some post-secondary education. However, they still trail when it comes to having at least a B.A. degree. This partial reversal reflects the impact of the "reverse treatment" by which Quebec made profound changes to its educational institutions, particularly in the post-secondary system, in the mid-to-late 60's. Given the speed at which this partial catch-up occurred, it would appear that the magnitude of the intergenerational externalities that can be associated with education is at best fairly modest.

Industry-Specific Capital and the Wage Profile: Evidence from the NLSY and the PSID

Using data from the NLSY (1979-1991) and from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID, 1981-1987), we seek to determine whether there is any net positive return to tenure with the current employer once we control for industry-specific capital. Using data from the PSID, Topel (JPE 1991) concluded that 10 years of seniority with an employer translated into a net return of about 25%. However, once we include total experience in the industry as an additional explanatory variable, the return to seniority vanishes almost completely when we use either OLS, GLS or IV-GLS estimation methods, although this conclusion varies somewhat according to the occupation, some occupation classes showing a negative net return to tenure and others showing a positive net return. Note also that this result holds whether the analysis is carried out at the 1-digit, 2-digit or 3-digit level. Therefore, it seems that what matters most for the wage profile in terms of human capital is not so much firm-specificity but industry-specificity. Avec les données du NLSY ainsi que celles du Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), on cherche à déterminer s'il y a un rendement positif net lié à l'ancienneté dans la firme. Topel (JPE 1991) a montré avec un échantillon du PSID l'existence d'un rendement substantiel (25 % en 10 ans). Toutefois, du moment que l'on inclut l'expérience dans l'industrie courante dans l'équation de salaire (en plus de l'ancienneté dans la firme ainsi que l'expérience totale de travail), l'effet d'ancienneté disparaît presque complètement, que l'on estime par simples moindres carrés généralisés ou par la méthode des variables instrumentales (IV-GLS), et ce, avec les deux échantillons différents. ¸ noter également que ce résultat est robuste au degré d'agrégation des classes d'industries.Tenure ; Return, Ancienneté ; Rendement

Intergenerational Progress in Educational Attainment When Institutional Change Really Matters: A Case Study of Franco-Americans vs. French-Speaking Quebecers

Using U.S. and Canadian census data I exploit the massive out migration of approximately 1 million French-Canadians who moved mainly to New England between 1865 and 1930 to look at how the educational attainment and enrollment patterns of their descendants compare with those of same aged French-speaking Quebeckers. Data from the 1971 (1970) Canadian (U.S.) censuses reveal that New England born residents who had French as their mother tongue enjoyed a considerable advantage in terms of educational attainment. I attribute this large discrepancy to their exposure to the U.S. public school system which had no equivalent in Quebec until the late sixties. This result is even more remarkable given the alleged negative selection out of Quebec and the fact that Franco-Americans were fairly successful in replicating the same educational institutions as the ones existing in Quebec. Turning to the 2001 (2000) Canadian (U.S.) censuses, I find strong signs that the gap has subsided for the younger aged individuals. In fact, contrary to 30 years earlier, young Quebeckers in 2001 had roughly the same number of years of schooling and were at least as likely to have some post-secondary education. However, they still trail when it comes to having at least a B.A. degree. This partial reversal reects the impact of the "reverse treatment" by which Quebec made profound changes to its educational institutions, particularly in the post-secondary system, in the mid-to-late 60's. Given the speed at which this partial catch-up occurred, it would appear that the magnitude of the intergenerational externalities that can be associated with education is at best fairly modest.Educational Attainment, Institutions

Intergenerational Progress in Educational Attainment when Institutional Change Really Matters: a Case Study of Franco-Americans vs. French-Speaking Quebeckers

Using U.S. and Canadian census data I exploit the massive out migration of approximately I million French-Canadians who moved mainly to New England between 1865 and 1930 to look at how the educational attainment and enrollment patterns of their descendants compare with those of same aged French-speaking Quebeckers. Data from the 1971 (1970) Canadian (U.S.) censuses reveal that New England born residents who had French as their mother tongue enjoyed a considerable advantage in terms of educational attainment. I attribute this large discrepancy to their exposure to the U.S. public school system wich had no equivalent in Quebec until the late sixties. This results is even more remarkable given the alleged negative selection out of Quebec and the fact that Franco-Americans were fairly successful in replicating the same educational institutions as the ones existing in Quebec. Turning to the 2001 (2000) Canadian (U.S.) censuses, I find strong signs that the gap has subsided for the younger aged individuals. In fact, contrary to 30 years earlier, young Quebeckers in 2001 had roughly the same number of years of schooling and were at least as likely to have some post-secondary education. However, they still trail when it comes to having at least a B.A. degree. This partial reversal reflects the impact of the "reverse treatment" by which Quebec made profound changes to its educational institutions, particularly in the post-secondary system, in the mid-to-late 60's. Given the speed at which this partial catch-up occurred, it would appear that the magnitude of the intergenerational externalities that can be associated with education is at best fairly modest.Educational attainment, Institutions

Wages and Mobility: The Impact of Employer-Provided Training

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) for the period spanning the years 1979-1991, this essay examines the impact of employer-provided formal training on the wage profile and on the mobility of young Americans making their transition to the labor market. By exploiting the longitudinal aspect of the data set, we are able to provide some control for unobserved individual and job-match heterogeneity by making use of the methodology proposed by Altonji and Shakotko (ReStud '87). The results show that (i) training with the current employer has a statistically and economically significant positive effect on the wage; (ii) employers seem to reward skills acquired through training with previous employers as much as skills they provide themselves; (iii) workers undergoing training have 18 percent lower starting salaries than other workers; this result is obtained by setting up a starting wage equation and by making use of a variable called on-the-job training still in progress at the time of the interview ; (iv) with a hazard model which makes use of multiple employment spells by the same worker (thereby allowing the implementation of fixed-effects methods akin to the conditional logit method), skills acquired through formal training programs provided by the current employer seem to be fairly specific. The upshot from these results is that formal on-the-job-training in the current job contains both a general component which the employer rewards up to its market value and a specific component which reduces mobility while not being rewarded. En utilisant des données américaines du National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), cette étude s'attarde à examiner l'impact de la formation dispensée par l'employeur sur le profil salarial ainsi que sur la mobilité des jeunes travailleurs faisant leur entrée sur le marché du travail. En exploitant l'aspect longitudinal de l'échantillon de façon à tenir compte de l'hétérogénéité non observée, les résultats montrent (i) un impact économiquement et statistiquement significatif de la formation sur le salaire dans l'emploi courant, (ii) un impact substantiel sur le salaire de la formation acquise avec les employeurs précédents, (iii) une réduction d'environ 18% du salaire de départ pour les travailleurs en formation, et (iv) par un modèle de durée qui tient compte des épisodes multiples d'emploi (permettant alors l'utilisation de méthodes de type effets fixes ), un degré substantiel de spécificité du capital humain acquis par le biais de programmes de formation dispensés par l'employeur. La conclusion à tirer de ces résultats est que le capital humain acquis contient à la fois une composante générale rémunérée également par tous les employeurs ainsi qu'une composante spécifique qui réduit la mobilité tout en n'étant pas rémunérée.Training; Wage profile; Mobility of workers, Formation ; Profil salarial ; Mobilité des travailleurs

RESISTING THE MELTING POT: THE LONG TERM IMPACT OF MAINTAINING IDENTITY FOR FRANCO-AMERICANS IN NEW ENGLAND

Approximately 1 million French-Canadians moved to the United States, mainly between 1865 and 1930, and most settled in neighboring New England. In 1900 almost a fifth of all persons born in French Canada lived in the U.S. These migrants exerted considerable efforts to maintain their language and to replicate their home country institutions, most notably the schooling system, in their new country. For decades, this resistance to assimilation generated considerable attention and concern in the U.S. The concerns are strikingly similar to those often invoked today in discussions of immigration from Hispanic countries, notably Mexico. Mexicans may not be assimilating into mainstream America as European immigrants did. We look at the convergence in the educational attainment of French Canadian immigrants across generations relative to native English-speaking New Englanders and to European Roman Catholic immigrants. The educational attainment of Franco-Americans lagged that of their fellow citizens over a long period of time. By the time of the 2000 Census, they appear to have largely achieved parity. The effects of World War II, especially military service, were very important in speeding up the assimilation process through a variety of related channels: educational attainment, language assimilation, marrying outside the ethnic group, and moving out of New England. Economic assimilation was very gradual because of the persistence of ethnic enclaves.

Employee Training in Canada

In this paper we first analyze the determinants of training using data from the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS). We find that education plays a key role in the receipt of all forms of training except in the case of employer-sponsored training. We also find substantial differences across demographic groups in the relationship between literacy skills and training. In the second part of the paper we merge the 1994 IALS to the 2003 IALSS and perform an analysis of the impact of the Quebec policy introduced in 1995 by which employers are required to devote at least 1% of the payroll to training activities. In the case of males we find no effect of the policy on the incidence of employer-sponsored training. On the other hand, Quebec females did experience a very large relative increase in training incidence between 1994 and 2003. However, the magnitude of the estimates is much too large to be plausibly caused by the policy given its modest scale. We show evidence of a significant relative increase in female employment rates in Quebec that could explain part -but probably not all-of the large increase in female employer-sponsored training.Literacy, Employer Training, Payroll Tax

Education and Smoking: Were Vietnam War Draft Avoiders Also More Likely to Avoid Smoking?

We use the Vietnam War draft avoidance behavior documented by Card and Lemieux (2002) as a quasi-natural experiment to infer causation from education to smoking and find strong evidence that education, whether it be measured in years of completed schooling or in educational attainment categories, reduces the probability of smoking at the time of the interview, more particularly the probability of smoking regularly. Interestingly, however, while we find that more education substantially increases the probability of never smoking, our other main finding is suggestive that increased education has a limited impact on smoking cessation behavior. On the one hand there is little evidence that it helps to increase the probability of not smoking regularly at the time of the interview, conditional on having smoked regularly at any time. However, among former regular smokers, those with more education have significantly shorter smoking careers.

EDUCATION AND SMOKING: WERE VIETNAM WAR DRAFT AVOIDERS ALSO MORE LIKELY TO AVOID SMOKING?

We use the Vietnam War draft avoidance behavior documented by Card and Lemieux (2001) as a quasi-natural experiment to infer causation from education to smoking and find strong evidence that education, whether measured in years of completed schooling or in educational attainment categories, reduces the probability of smoking at the time of the interview, more particularly the probability of smoking regularly. However, while we find that more education substantially increases the probability of never smoking, there is little evidence that it helps people stop smoking, although the estimates are fairly imprecise. Potential mechanisms linking education and smoking are also explored.