As the number of secondary school graduates rises, many developing countries expand the supply of public and private universities or face pressure to do so. However, several factors point to the need for caution, including weak job markets, low-quality university programs, and job-education...

Differences in labor market outcomes for women and men are highly persistent. Apart from discrimination, one frequently mentioned explanation could be differences in the attitude towards competition for both genders. Abundant empirical evidence indicates that multiple influences shape attitudes...

This paper seeks to investigate the occupational segregation of white women in the U.S. at the local labor market level, exploring whether the segregation of this group is a homogeneous phenomenon across the country or there are important disparities in the opportunities that these women meet...

Developing countries often face two well-known structural problems: high youth unemployment and high inequality. In recent decades, policymakers have increased the share of government spending on education in developing countries to address both of these issues. The empirical literature offers...

A postsecondary degree is often held up as the one sure path to financial success. But is that true regardless of institutional quality, discipline studied, or individual characteristics? Is a college degree always worth the cost? Students deciding whether to invest in college and what field to...

There is widespread interest in universal early education, both to promote child development and to support maternal employment. Positive long-term findings from small-scale early education interventions for low-income children in the US have greatly influenced the public discussion. However,...

More than 4.4 million students enrolled in US public schools participate in English language learner programs because of linguistic barriers to learning in regular classrooms. Whether native language instruction should be used in these programs is a contentious issue. Recent studies, using...

Do students benefit from compulsory schooling? In an important article, Oreopoulos (2006) studied the 1947 British compulsory schooling law change and found large returns to schooling of about 15% using the General Household Survey (GHS). Reanalysing this dataset, we find much smaller returns of...