Providing equal opportunities to all members of society independent of an individual's socioeconomic background is a major objective of German policy makers. However, evidence on the access to education suggests that opportunities of children with a non-academic family background are still...

This paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues...

Wage-differentials by education of men and women are examined from African household surveys to suggest private wage returns to schooling. It is commonly asserted that returns are highest at primary school levels and decrease at secondary and postsecondary levels, whereas private returns in six...

There is hardly any estimate of the returns to schooling in India based on a national level representative data for the recent period. This paper provides estimates of the returns to education in India by gender, age cohort and location (by rural-urban) for the most recent period 1993/4, and...

This paper uses national survey data to estimate up-to-date private rates of return to education in Burkina Faso. Mincer earning regressions are fitted to wage data for women and men, and for public and private sector workers. The main results indicate that rates of return rise by level of...

Despite the lower quality of education provided Africans compared with whites in South Africa, the percentage wage gains associated with additional years of primary, secondary, and higher education are substantially larger for Africans than for whites in 1993, and they increase for both race...

In this article I analyze the changes in the gender wage gap in the western region, eastern region and in reunified Germany during the period 1999 - 2006. I use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and implement two alternative decomposition methodologies; the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991)...

This paper establishes that individuals with an internal locus of control, i.e., who believe that reinforcement in life comes from their own actions instead of being determined by luck or destiny, earn higher wages. However, this positive effect only translates into labor income via the channel...

Looking at smoking-behavior it can be shown that there are differences concerning the time-preference-rate. Therefore this has an effect on the optimal schooling decision in the way that we assume a lower average human capital level for smokers. According to a higher time-preference-rate we...

This paper analyzes the effect of educational mismatch on wages in Germany, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Educational mismatch has been discussed extensively, mostly by applying OLS wage regressions which are prone to an unobserved heterogeneity bias. This problem is...