The rise in wage inequality in the U.S. labor market during the 1980s is usually attributed to skill-biased technical change (SBTC), associated with the development of personal computers and related information technologies. We review the evidence in favor of this hypothesis, focusing on the...

This paper summarizes the findings from the first randomized evaluation of a job training program in Latin America. Between 2001 and 2005 the government of the Dominican Republic operated a subsidized training program for low-income youth in urban areas. The program featured several weeks of...

The 1994 Federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) provided more than $1.5 billion over five years to support increased career preparation activities in the country's public schools. However, the STWOA was not re-authorized, so state governments face decisions about levels of funding...

The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort represents the first time in the history of the United States that such a large and well-educated group of workers will exit the labor force. This could imply skill shortages in the U.S. economy. We develop near-term labor force projections of the...

We review studies of the impact of credit constraints on the accumulation of human capital. Evidence suggests that credit constraints are increasingly important for schooling and other aspects of households' behavior. We highlight the importance of early childhood investments, since their...

Although military conscription was widespread during most of the past century, credible evidence on the effects of mandatory service is limited. We provide new evidence on the long-term effects of peacetime conscription, using longitudinal data for Portuguese men born in 1967. These men were...

Shifts in the incidence of various types of training over the 1980s favored more-educated, more-experienced workers. Coupled with the fact that this training is associated with higher wages, these shifts suggest that training may have contributed to the growth of wage inequality in this period....

This paper reviews and interprets the literature on the effect of school resources on students' eventual earnings and educational attainment. In addition, new evidence is presented on the impact of the great disparity in school resources between black and white students in North and South...

We study a set of programs implemented in Philadelphia high schools that focus on boosting post-secondary enrollment. These programs are less career oriented than traditional school-to-work programs, but are consistent with the broadening of the goals of school-to-work to emphasize...

We argue in this paper that the focus on employment effects in recent studies of minimum wages ignores an important interaction between schooling, employment, and the minimum wage. To study these linkages, we estimate a conditional logit model of employment and enrollment outcomes for teenagers...