Preschool for all? Enrollment and maternal labour supply implications of a bilingual preschool policy

ABSTRACT

Previous research supports the effectiveness of preschool in various contexts, yet there is limited evidence whether universal-type preschool policies induce changes in enrollment. While certain states have enacted universal preschool policies, some have also considered bilingual preschool mandates, either as a supplementary or stand-alone policy, requiring schools to open up bilingual classrooms for children from non-English speaking families. The question of whether bilingual preschool policies can induce enrollment and close achievement gaps between English learners and English speakers is particularly important today for urban cities and states with large immigrant populations. In this study, I exploit exogenous variation from the first bilingual prekindergarten mandate in Illinois to estimate the causal effects on preschool enrollment and maternal labour supply of recently immigrated and Hispanic families. Utilizing a difference-in-differences strategy, estimates suggest significant effects on preschool enrollment between 18% and 20% and no effects of increasing maternal labour supply in Illinois. Estimates are robust to various specifications, control groups, and timeframes. I use the analysis to further discuss whether universal preschool policies are designed sufficiently for access and inclusion of various student types, and contribute to our understanding on the effectiveness of using childcare subsidies to increase the welfare of low-income families.     

Measuring heterogeneity in the returns to education using an education reform

In this paper, we explore the impact of a mandatory education reform as well as pre-reform availability of schools above the mandatory level, on educational attainment and returns to education in Norway. We contribute to the existing literature by focusing on the heterogeneity of the impact of reforms. Our results indicate that increased compulsory education from seven to nine years increased the general level of education beyond the compulsory education. We also find that the effect of family background on educational attainment was weaker after the reform. The average treatment effect on returns to education is surprisingly high for education of intermediate duration. This means that increasing the general level of education potentially generates high returns in the form of wages. We also find that the effect of treatment on the treated on the returns to education is 1-4 percentage points higher than the average treatment effect.     

Private returns to education versus education spill-over effects

In this study we test whether education spill-over effects biase private returns to education. We newly investigate for such effects within narrowly defined occupational groups of a given firm using, going thus a step further than earlier studies analysing such effects at employer level or within regions. Using panel data from a Swiss employer-based labour force survey of 1996 we find clear empirical evidence for education spill-over effects on individual wages (2%). This result proved to be robust against an alternative explanation based on imperfect substitution between highly and less educated workers. Consequently, conventionally calculated private returns to education are shown to be biased upwards. This work was undertaken under the TSER program PL980182 for the PuRE project and was supported by the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science. I thank Josef Zweimüller and Rafael Lalive for their valuable suggestions. Any remaining errors are my own.     

Firm entry deregulation,competition and returns to education and skill

This paper studies the effect of firm entry deregulation on the returns to skill and education. We exploit a comprehensive episode of entry deregulation, unique in the industrialized world, as a quasi-natural experiment. Using matched employer–employee data for the universe of workers and firms in Portugal, we show that increased product market competition, which resulted from deregulation, increased the returns to a university degree and the returns to skill. We verify that our results are not driven by changes in employment composition, and are unlikely to be driven by skill-biased technical change, or by workers who change skill levels after the deregulation.     

Real-time decentralized information processing and returns to scale

We use a model of real-time decentralized information processing to understand how constraints on human information processing affect the returns to scale of organizations. We identify three informational (dis)economies of scale: diversification of heterogeneous risks (positive), sharing of information and of costs (positive), and crowding out of recent information due to information processing delay (negative). Because decision rules are endogenous, delay does not inexorably lead to decreasing returns to scale. However, returns are more likely to be decreasing when computation constraints, rather than sampling costs, limit the information upon which decisions are conditioned. The results illustrate how information processing constraints together with the requirement of informational integration cause a breakdown of the replication arguments that have been used to establish nondecreasing technological returns to scale. November 24, 1999; revised version: March 14, 2000     

教育收益率的地区差异研究

教育收益率的高低对不同地区的经济增长速度和地区经济差异有着重要的影响。文章从区域经济增长的角度出发,对教育收益率的区域差异进行研究,研究结果显示:无论是从总体上看还是从性别看来,东部地区的教育收益率普遍高于中西部地区;在东部地区,高等教育的收益率高于中小学教育的收益率;在中西部地区,高等教育收益率低于中小学教育收益率。无论在东部还是在西部,从总体上看还是从教育层次看,女性的教育收益率均高于男性。上述结论的政策启示是:中西部地区要夯实提高教育收益率特别是高等教育的收益率的产业基础和市场基础;必须保持对高等教育财政投入的不断增长,努力降低高等教育的私人成本;要保障女性受教育的权利,在一些特殊群体中,至少要保证女性接受中小学教育的权利。     

Changing wage structure and education in Vietnam, 1992–98

This paper examines the changes in relative earnings of workers with different education levels in Vietnam. Using a simple demand‐and‐supply framework developed by Katz and Murphy (1992 ), it was found that an increase in the relative demand for better‐educated male workers in particular appears to play an important role in explaining the earnings differentials between workers of different education groups. Education reform to better suit the needs of the post‐reform emerging market, on‐the‐job training for workers and equal access to education are some policy options that hold the key to reducing wage inequality between different education groups.     

Individual heterogeneity in the returns to schooling: instrumental variables quantile regression using twins data

Considerable effort has been exercised in estimating mean returns to education while carefully considering biases arising from unmeasured ability and measurement error. Recent work has investigated whether there are variations from the “mean” return to education across the population with mixed results. We use an instrumental variables estimator for quantile regression on a sample of twins to estimate an entire family of returns to education at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages while addressing simultaneity and measurement error biases. We test whether there is individual heterogeneity in returns to education and find that: more able individuals obtain more schooling perhaps due to lower marginal costs and/or higher marginal benefits of schooling and that higher ability individuals (those further to the right in the conditional distribution of wages) have higher returns to schooling consistent with a non-trivial interaction between schooling and unobserved abilities in the generation of earnings. The estimated returns are never lower than 9 percent and can be as high as 13 percent at the top of the conditional distribution of wages but they vary significantly only along the lower to middle quantiles. Our findings may have meaningful implications for the design of educational policies.     

城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异及其解释

利用中国社会科学院经济研究所"中国城乡居民收入分配"课题组1995年和2002年的家庭抽样调查数据,本文使用分层线性模型重新估计了1995年、2002年我国居民的教育收益率,得到了不同于OLS估计的结果:(1)我国城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异很大,差异主要来源于省内各城市之间,来源于省间的差别并不显著;(2)计算了省内城市劳动力市场化程度对当地教育收益率的边际影响,发现劳动力市场的发育确实有利于提高教育收益率,而且劳动力市场化程度的差异在一定程度上为各地教育收益率的差异提供了解释。     

Ethnic patterns of returns to education in Bulgaria

It is widely accepted that disparities in education contribute to the poor labour market outcomes experienced by ethnic minority groups and consequently to their poverty. In this article, I analyse differential educational benefits in Bulgaria and compare returns to education for the Roma minority with the majority population and the Turkish minority. I show that both ethnic minority groups have lower education levels and employment rates than the majority population and that they also have lower returns to education. This result could be related to minorities' lower education quality as well as to discrimination in the labour market. Integration policies should thus aim to improve employability and labour market competence of vulnerable groups starting from school.     

Education for the masses? The interaction between wealth,educational and political inequalities

This paper presents a simple model of distribution dynamics, in which the distributions of wealth, education and political power are circularly endogenous. Different levels of education translate into different income and wealth levels. Political power may (or may not) vary with wealth, and in turn affects decisions on the level of public expenditure on education. Since the market for education credit is imperfect, some people might need to rely on public schooling, the quality of which depends on those expenditure levels. As a result, educational opportunities differ along the wealth distribution. The dynamic system displays multiple equilibria, some of which are characterized by a vicious circle of interaction between educational, wealth and political inequalities. These particular equilibria, which are more unequal, are also shown to be inefficient in terms of aggregate output levels. Switching equilibria may be achieved through redistribution of political power.
JEL classification: D31, D63.     

The impact of heterogeneity of discount factors and asset returns on inequality

We investigate the effect of differential access to financial markets, discount factor and wealth endowment on poverty and inequality. We construct a model of educational and savings choice with heterogeneous agents. Motivated by empirical evidence, in this economy the return on savings is a non-decreasing function of the amount saved. As expected, more patient households tend to become wealthier and more educated. The heterogeneity on portfolio returns is shown to be key to our main result: the model closely fits the data on income and wealth inequalities, being able to explain the existing Brazil’s inequality patterns. The model was also calibrated to the US, with similar fit. We then evaluate two types of public policies based on cash transfer schemes (CTSs), that aim to reduce poverty and inequality. We find that the CTS version in which receiving the benefit is conditional on educating the household’s youngster outperforms its unconditional version in almost all dimensions analysed.     

The division of labor and the extent of the market

Summary. A firms degree of specialization is modeled as the number of different goods it produces. When a firm chooses its degree of specialization, it faces a tradeoff between the fixed cost and the marginal cost of production. A firms degree of specialization is shown to increase with the extent of the market. Meanwhile, the real wage rate, as a measure of the extent of the market, is endogenously determined in the model and is shown to increase with the division of labor.Received: 29 April 2002, Revised: 18 June 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: A10.The author thanks an anonymous referee and Antonio Ciccone for their very valuable and constructive suggestions. I thank Deborah Minehart, Robert Schwab, and Daniel Vincent for their valuable guidance and advice. I also thank Mingchao Chen, David Selover, and Xiaokai Yang for their helpful advice.     

The returns to education and wage penalty from overeducation: New evidence from Vietnam

This study intends to estimate the rate of returns to education in Vietnam, the distributive effects of education on wages, and the wage penalty from the incidence of overeducation in the Vietnamese labor market during 2004–2016. This study employs a pseudo-panel approach to address omitted variables bias and the unconditional quantile regression to identify the heterogeneity of returns to education across the income distribution. Our main finding indicates that the estimated rate of returns to education in Vietnam is approximately 6.5%, showing a downward bias from previous estimates. The returns vary across wage distributions, where a lower rate of return is observed in lower quantiles and a higher rate among those individuals at the higher quantiles. The returns to education have declined since 2008, confirming the oversupply of highly educated workers in the Vietnamese labor market with an estimated wage penalty of 17%. Government assistance measures are needed to reduce the overeducation and the wage penalty issues in the Vietnamese labor market.     

中国城乡教育收益率差异与收入差距

本文利用CHNS数据,研究了历次调查年份分城乡和性别的教育收益率的动态变化。研究发现,分城乡和性别的教育收益率都基本呈现逐年递增的趋势,但城镇的教育收益率总是高于农村,而无论是城镇还是农村,女性的教育收益率都高于男性。从动态变化来看,自2000年以来城乡教育收益率的差异逐年加大,其中主要是城乡男性劳动力的教育收益率差距增大。本文的研究表明,除教育水平本身的差异以外,教育收益率差异的扩大也是引起城乡收入差距加剧的重要原因。     

Testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics: An analysis via the learning curve approach

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock-in. It presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors, i.e. learning-by-doing, learning-by-searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system. The paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach. Econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications. These specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias, the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators. Results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock-in phenomena of the energy system. They also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle (maturity). In particular, results point out that, 1) the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty, 2) the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and R&D activities development, 3) conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects.     

Wage determination and returns to education in different ownerships of China: Evidence from quantile regressions

In this paper, quantile regressions is used to estimate wage equations of different ownerships. Quantile regressions give us distributions rather than a single estimate of the returns both to education and experience in each ownership sector. For state-owned enterprises (SOE), the returns to education tended to be larger at the bottom of the conditional distribution of wages in 1991 and 1993, and there was no such trend in 1997. For the private sector, however, the returns to education tended to be larger at the top positions in 1993 and 1997. It is also found that the growth rates of the wages at the bottom of the conditional distribution of wages are higher than those at the top in SOEs. No such patterns for the private sector is found. It is suggested the wage mechanism in the private sector is more market-oriented. __________ Translated from Shijie Jingji Wenhui 世界经济文汇 (World Economic Papers), 2006, (4): 1–26     

Heterogeneity in the economic returns to schooling among Chinese rural–urban migrants, 2002–07

This paper analyses the returns to schooling among Chinese rural migrants using data from the 2002 and 2007 China Household Income Project. Our non‐parametric estimates show substantial heterogeneity in the schooling rates of return among migrant workers. While the returns to schooling for the overall sample have increased over time, this result is driven by the substantial increases in the schooling coefficients of female migrants. We expect the endogeneity biases in the estimated schooling returns to be decreasing after considering the change in the ability distribution of migrant workers during 2002–07.     

Returns to schooling for urban and migrant workers in China: a detailed investigation

We use a new data set, the 2009 Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) to estimate returns to schooling in China using instrumental variable (IV) estimation. After identifying a set of instruments, we conduct comprehensive validity and relevance testing of different combinations of instruments as well as robustness analysis of our estimates for rural-to-urban migrants and urban residents in China. We find that our point estimates are in the 6–9% range for urban workers compared to 7–8% for migrant workers. Returns for men (at 8–9%) are slightly higher than for women (at 6–7%). Thus, private returns to education in urban China in 2009 were not as high as other transition and developing countries, but substantial and have increased over time. Comparing OLS and IV estimates, we also find that the attenuation bias due to measurement error is generally large and more important in the migrant sample compared to the urban sample.     

Education and earnings in urban West Africa

Using a series of comparable labor force surveys in urban West Africa, we estimate the private returns to education among representative samples of workers in seven economic capitals (Abidjan, Bamako, Cotonou, Dakar, Lome, Niamey and Ouagadougou). The data allow us to provide a unique cross-country comparison using rigorously the same variables and methodology for each country. We tackle the issues of endogenous sector allocation (public, formal private and informal sectors) and endogeneity of the education variable in the earnings functions. We find that the returns to schooling are most often enhanced once an endogenous education variable is accounted for. This effect holds particularly true in the informal sector. In most West African cities of our sample, the public sector gives more value to education, followed by the formal private sector and then the informal sector. We also shed light on convex returns to education in all the cities and sectors, including in informal activity. More generally, a major contribution of this paper is to provide evidence of significant effects of education on individual earnings in the informal sectors of the West African cities, even at high levels of schooling.