Why is the Rate of Return to Schooling Higher For Women Than For Men?

The rate of return to schooling appears to be nearly two percentage points greater for females than for males in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set, despite the fact that females tend to earn less, both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics. A survey of previous studies reporting wage equations reveals that a higher return to female schooling appears to be the norm, although it has not attracted comment. This paper considers various explanations. The most important involves the detrimental impact of discrimination and other factors that cause women to accept wage offers that undervalue their characteristics. It is hypothesized that the better educated is a woman, the more able and willing she is to overcome the se handicaps and compete with men in the labour market, and an index of discrimination disaggregated by years of schooling is constructed using Oaxaca decompositions. This index is indeed negatively correlated with schooling and it accounts for about one half of the differential in the male and female schooling coefficients. Next considered is the possibility that part of the differential could be attributable to male-female differences in the quality of educational attainment, as proxied by their academic outcomes in high school. The NLSY females did indeed perform better than the males, but there is little association between academic attainment and Earnings and allowing for it made no difference to the estimate of the differential in the returns to schooling. The third explanation considered is that women choose to work in sectors where education is relatively highly valued. Controlling for this effect does indeed account for much of the remaining differential.returns to education, wage equations

Impact of Work Experience and Training in the Current and Previous Occupations on Earnings: Micro Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

In the empirical literature on work experience, job tenure, training and earnings, only one previous study has made a distinction between the effects of work experience in the current occupation and work experience in previous ones, and no study has made the distinction with respect to training. Yet it is reasonable to hypothesize that the distinction is important. Using data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, it is found that the returns to work experience in the current occupation with previous employers are similar to those to work experience with the current employer, and that tenure has no independent effect. Similarly it is found that the distinction between training for current and previous occupations gives better results than a distinction between training for current and previous employers. It is found that work experience, classroom training and vocational institute training for the current occupation have highly significant effects on earnings, with work experience having by far the largest absolute impact. Apart from high school vocational institute training, which actually has a significantly negative effect on the earnings of those with high cognitive test scores, the previous-occupation counterparts do not have significant effects.Earnings, work experience, training

Numeracy, Literacy and Earnings: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

The analysis is concerned with the contributions of numeracy and literacy to earnings, for three reasons: first, no clear pattern emerges from existing findings relating to the contributions of different types of ability, and numeracy and literacy appear to be a natural basic starting point; second, measures to improve numeracy and literacy are often given priority in policies intended to help those with lowest educational attainment; and third, with the growth of the knowledge-based economy, and the increasing importance of digital technology, it is of interest to compare the levels and rates of change of the contributions of numeracy and literacy as reflected in earnings. The results suggest that numeracy has a highly significant effect on earnings, mostly through its effect on college attainment, but also directly, controlling for attainment, and interactively with attainment, and its effect is subject to increasing returns. While the magnitude of the effect is small in absolute terms, it is substantial when compared with other effects, and it appears to be increasing at a rate of 6 percent per year. Literacy also has a highly significant effect on earnings, but it would appear to be indirectly through its effect on attainment. There is no evidence of a direct effect, an interactive effect with attainment, nonlinearity, or change through time.Numeracy, literacy, basic skills, earnings

Employment Protection Legislation and Plant-Level Productivity in India

Using plant-level data from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) for the fiscal years from 1998-99 through 2007-08, this study provides plant-level cross-state/time-series evidence of the impact of employment protection legislation (EPL) on total factor productivity (TFP) and labor productivity in India. Identification of the effect of EPL follows from a difference-in-differences estimator inspired by Rajan and Zingales (1998) that takes advantage of the state-level variation in labor regulation and heterogeneous industry characteristics. The fundamental identification assumption is that EPL is more likely to restrict firms operating in industries with higher labor intensity and/or higher sales volatility. Our results show that firms in labor intensive or more volatile industries benefited the most from labor reforms in their states. Our point estimates indicate that, on average, firms in labor intensive industries and in flexible labor markets have TFP residuals 14% higher than those registered for their counterparts in states with more stringent labor laws. However, no important differences are identified among plants in industries with low labor intensity when comparing states with high and low levels of EPL reform. Similarly, the TFP of plants in volatile industries and in states that experienced more pro-employer reforms is 11% higher than that of firms in volatile industries and in more restrictive states; however, the TFP residuals of plants in industries with low labor intensity are 11% lower in high EPL reform states than in states with lower levels of EPL reform. In sum, the evidence presented here suggests that the high labor costs and rigidities imposed through Indian federal labor laws are lessened by labor market reforms at the state level.

Putting Training in Perspective: A Longitudinal Case Study Approach

Detailed education, employment and training histories have been constructed for a cohort of 440 male respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The data show that most respondents without college degrees have experienced at least one occupational break, defined as a change from one occupation to another sufficiently occupational skills acquired previously. The data also show that most of those in employment in 1992 had had no formal training for their current occupations and moreover thought that none was necessary. These findings imply that the comprehensive provision of entry-level training for those not college-bound, as advocated by those promoting vocational education in high schools or as practised in those countries with comprehensive apprenticeship systems, is unlikely to have a direct impact on the performance of the economy or even on employment. Instead training priorities should be directed towards the provision of training as the demand arises and to improving access to college-level vocational education for those who can benefit from it.

Two Amino Acid Residues Contribute to a Cation-π Binding Interaction in the Binding Site of an Insect GABA Receptor

Cys-loop receptor binding sites characteristically possess an "aromatic box," where several aromatic amino acid residues surround the bound ligand. A cation-π interaction between one of these residues and the natural agonist is common, although the residue type and location are not conserved. Even in the closely related vertebrate GABA_A and GABA_C receptors, residues in distinct locations perform this role: in GABA_A receptors, a Tyr residue in loop A forms a cation-π interaction with GABA, while in GABA_C receptors it is a loop B residue. GABA-activated Cys-loop receptors also exist in invertebrates, where they have distinct pharmacologies and are the target of a range of pesticides. Here we examine the location of GABA in an insect binding site by incorporating a series of fluorinated Phe derivatives into the receptor binding pocket using unnatural amino acid mutagenesis, and evaluating the resulting receptors when expressed in Xenopus oocytes. A homology model suggests that two aromatic residues (in loops B and C) are positioned such that they could contribute to a cation-π interaction with the primary ammonium of GABA, and the data reveal a clear correlation between the GABA EC_(50) and the cation-π binding ability both at Phe206 (loop B) and Tyr254 (loop C), demonstrating for the first time the contribution of two aromatic residues to a cation-π interaction in a Cys-loop receptor