Rethinking Hecs: Its Definition and Fiscal Role in Compensating for Non-deductibility of Tuition Fees

This paper develops a two period model of the higher education decision to determine the required return from higher education. It uses the model to calculate the proportion of full tuition costs which should be charged 'up front' under the Australian Higher Education Scheme (HECS), in order to compensate for the fact that such fees are not deductible against income for tax purposes. Because full tuition costs represent less than 11 per cent of the total costs of higher education, the ideal HECS ratio is relatively high, in the region of 0.7. The low relative importance of tuition costs means that fee subsidy schemes cannot possibly compensate for other distortions such as income tax progression which persist over the working life of graduates.     

Declining Returns to Education in Norway? Comparing Estimates across Cohorts,Sectors and over Time

We examine the role of the Norwegian education system in explaining the moderate and stable earnings dispersion in Norway. Estimating earnings equations for 1980 and 1990, we find that returns to education have been remarkably stable in Norway, also when we compare returns to education across different sectors of the economy. Our analysis controls for self-selection into education by using an instrumental variable technique. We estimate separate education earnings profiles for different cohorts to identify the effect on wage premiums of the large changes that have taken place in the Norwegian education system. The substantially higher level of educational attainment for more recent cohorts does not, cet. par. , seem to have a negative effect on educational wage premiums for these younger cohorts.
JEL classification: J 24, J 31, I     

Expected Life-earnings Paths with and without Higher Education: The case of India

The paper analyses students' expectations of earnings with and without higher education at three career points: at entry to the labour force, at the five year point, and career peak, constructing paths of expected earnings. The estimated expected internal rates of return to investment in different types of higher education are quite high. Considering ratios of expected peak-year to entry earnings, the highest gradient is in the case of specialised/professional education. Similarly for the case of students of urban origin as compared with those of semi-urban or rural origin. Likewise, the gradient is relatively high in the case of students with an English medium of study compared with the case of students with Punjabi or Hindi. As expected, the gradient is higher for those who aspire to higher education than those who do not, in all three types of higher education. The association between expected peak earnings and the proportion of gains in earnings that take place in the first five years is negative in all cases; only expectations of sustained growth in earnings lead to the highest predicted peak earnings levels. The regression results suggest that socio-economic background, social capital, ability, and school-related variables significantly influence the formation of expectations about earnings.     

Education,occupation and earnings: A recursive approach for France

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between education, occupation and earnings with an emphasis on the role of occupation in the determination of the effect of education on earnings. At the same time, several forms of human capital and other exogeneous variables are examined. The model is a recursive nature, and it was applied for French individual data. The result tells that despite very strong relationship between education and occupation, and between occupation and earnings, the relative significance of these relationships is greatly modified by different occupations (or classes). It was found also that men and women are considerably different not only as for the relationship between education, occupation and earnings, but also for several exogenous variables.     

Technological change,occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes: Implications for earnings and income inequality in Canada

The earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to Canada are analyzed. The growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non‐routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education. Controlling for education, we find a pronounced cross‐arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross‐cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross‐cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements. The immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall Canadian earnings inequality.     

Differential rewards to, and contributions of, education in urban China's segmented labor markets

Abstract. Using worker data from a 1999–2000 urban enterprise survey, we examine the effects of education on the current earnings of continuously employed urban workers, migrants and laid off but subsequently re‐employed workers. We also decompose the earnings differentials between each of these groups of workers and then assess the contribution of education to explanations of the differentials. The empirical results demonstrate that returns to education increase with marketization and competition in the workplace. We also find educational attainment to be an important explanator of the earnings differentials between institutionally differentiated groups of workers in China's urban labor markets.     

THE GROWTH OF FAMILY EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN CANADA, 1980–2005

In this study we document recent trends in family earnings inequality using data from the Canadian Census and provide insight into the various factors that drive changes in the family earnings distribution. Over the period 1980–95 we observe substantial increases in family earnings inequality. In contrast, we find that some decrease in inequality occurred over the period 1995–2005 although the earnings of the richest 1 percent of families increased substantially. We use semi‐parametric decomposition methods to show that increases in the employment rates of men and women, increases in their educational attainment, and decreases in assortative mating tended to have equalizing effects on the family earnings distribution. We also show that increases in the returns to higher education and increases in the proportion of single individuals as well as lone‐parent families drove increases in family earnings inequality.     

Repayment performance of joint-liability microcredits: Metropolitan evidence on social capital and group names

This study empirically tests the predictions of four primary theories applicable to joint-liability microcredit programs’ repayment performance using an administrative data in a metropolitan setting. We introduce a new variable, group names, as a proxy for social capital to capture cooperation, solidarity, and drive for success, which shows a significant positive impact of 9.9% on repayment performance. Precise calculations of residential distance between group members show a deterioration of repayment performance by 1.1% with a 15-min increase in minimum walking distance. The results also show that joint liability, sectoral diversification, type of sector that the borrowers facilitate, the ratio of new members in a group, characteristics of loan officers, loan amount, interest rate, income-loan amount coverage ratio, the existence of senior members, average education, and diversity in income streams significantly affect repayment performance.     

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.     

Occupations,fields of study and returns to education

This paper considers several possible channels behind the well‐documented effect of education on earnings. The first channel is that education makes workers more productive on a given task, as in a conventional human capital framework. The second channel is based on the idea that education helps workers get assigned to higher‐paying occupations where output is more sensitive to skill. A third and final channel is that workers are more productive and earn more when they are matched to a job related to their field of study. Using data from the 2005 National Graduate Survey and the 2006 Canadian Census, I find that channels two and three account for close to half of the conventionally measured return to education. The results indicate that the return to education varies greatly depending on occupation, field of study and the match between these two factors.     

Lifetime Earnings, Discount Rate, Ability and the Demand for Post–compulsory Education in Men in England and Wales

Human capital theory suggests educational investments are made based on expected returns over the lifetime. Most other work in this field, particularly using British data, is based on demand models estimated in reduced form, with no earnings measures, or crudely constructed earnings measures, based on one or two earnings observations per individual.
We present a structural model of demand for educational investment which includes estimates of earnings paths for educational options as determinants of educational choice. This provides us with directly interpretable parameter estimates. The discount rate is also determined within our demand model.
Ability controlled earnings profiles are estimated by matching individuals from the General Household Survey to individuals in similar occupations from the National Child Development Survey (NCDS).
Our results show that expected earnings profiles vary according to observed ability and educational choice. Results from the demand model show that expected lifetime earnings have a significant impact on educational choice.
Other socio–demographic factors, particularly social class, also exhibit significant influences on the education decision. We estimate the discount rate to be lower than reported in other studies.     

Do Education and Sex Matter for Intergenerational Earnings Mobility? Some Evidence from Australia

This paper analyses the intergenerational earnings mobility in Australia for all combinations of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. We find that mobility is highest between parents and children of the opposite sex. Daughters are more mobile than sons with respect to fathers' earnings, but there is no statistical difference between the sexes' mobility with respect to mothers' earnings. We also consider how differing levels of mobility between the sexes may be related to the education level of the children. It was found that the father–son elasticity increases with son's education level and that the difference between son–father and daughter–father mobility may be associated with the higher levels of education obtained by females from less affluent backgrounds.     

The English Language Fluency And Earnings Of Ethnic Minorities In Britain

This study addresses two issues. First it estimates how much of the male and female ethnic earnings gap is the result of an advantage in the English language and whether there is an earnings penalty to non–whites, over and above this. Lack of fluency is shown to have a highly significant impact on the earnings of ethnic minorities in Britain, although the language penalty is much greater for women than it is for men. Moreover, only foreign born non–white males that have arrived in Britain between 1970 and 1994, exhibit lower earnings once language fluency is taken into consideration, whilst British born females exhibit higher earnings. So the evidence here suggests that non–white earnings are assimilating towards those of whites and that lower female non–white earnings are a direct result of a lack of fluency rather than ethnicity. Secondly, the study will try to measure any endogenous bias associated with the non–fluency earnings penalty. Controlling for the endogeneity between language fluency and earnings is shown to be problematic. Estimates suggest that single equation earnings functions slightly underestimate the true language fluency penalty for males, and slightly overestimate the fluency penalty for females. Finally, education and fluency are not surprisingly shown to be complementary.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN VOCATIONAL SCHOOL TRAINING AND EARNINGS PREMIUMS IN TAIWAN

Abstract

International capital mobility and economic restructuring have brought training and skills acquisition to the forefront of policy dialogues. Taiwan has gone beyond most countries in promoting vocational education and setting strict quotas for schooling. Although the education plans do not have separate targets for men and women, they have gendered outcomes. Estimates of earnings premiums using ordinary least squares and quantile regression techniques indicate that only men have gained consistently higher premiums from vocational school compared to general schooling. Women who were denied access to the university system have forgone college premiums that exceed those of men. Also, the commerce track, in which women cluster, yields an earnings penalty compared to general schooling, while the technical track, in which men predominate, yields an earnings premium. Policy reforms based on relaxing education quotas and enforcing equal opportunity legislation would provide women with more rewarding education and career options.     

Native-immigrant wage differentials in Greece: discrimination and assimilation

This article applies the Blinder–Oaxaca methodology in order to dissect the average earnings differentials between Greek workers and three different groups of immigrants into a part attributed to differences in characteristics and a part due to discrimination. It also seeks to identify the effect of assimilation (i.e. postmigration human capital) on immigrants’ earnings. We use information about 8429 individuals, of which 1185 are immigrants. The data are drawn from the Greek Labour Force Survey (2009). Our results suggest that discrimination is significantly higher for immigrants originating from non-EU countries than it is for EU foreigners, while it is negative for those who terminated education in Greece. Also, there is evidence that (i) post-migration human capital is a significant determinant of immigrants earnings, (ii) there is limited transferability of skills between sending countries and Greece and (iii) education is the main determinant of the wage gap between natives and immigrants.     

Family Background and Economic Status in Finland

The importance of family background for economic outcomes is analyzed, using a Finnish data set. The estimates for intergenerational and sibling correlations in earnings are comparatively low. By estimating the magnitude of family influence conditional on parental earnings, children with poor parents are found to have lower intergenerational elasticities, while the sibling resemblance is higher. Children with rich parents have higher intergenerational elasticities and the sibling resemblance is also higher, except for daughters. The results also indicate that the largest share of the intergenerational correlation is transmitted through observed characteristics, such as education and, in particular, occupation.
JEL classification : D 1; D 3; J 6     

EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN USA, 1969–99: COMPARING INEQUALITY USING EARNINGS EQUATIONS

A simple decomposition method using an earnings equation is proposed by synthesizing two decomposition methodologies, those of Juhn, Murphy, and Pierce (1993) and Fields (2003), in order to study changes in earnings inequality in America during the last three decades in the 20th century. The proposed method enables us to compute both aggregate and detailed decompositions of changes in earnings inequality. The decomposition of earnings inequality change during the last three decades in 20th century shows that the increase in earnings inequality in America was caused by changes in the wage structure and the distribution of unobservables. The premium to education contributes substantially to the widening of earnings inequality during the 1980s and 1990s. A decreasing male wage premium contributes to leveling earnings inequality.     

SCHOOLING AND OCCUPATIONAL EARNINGS*

This paper investigates the relation between schooling and earnings across and within occupations. Across occupations earnings are positively related to mean education. Within occupations the variance in schooling levels is generally substantial, but within two thirds of the occupations no relation between schooling and earnings is observed, while in the remaining third the pattern of sensitivity varies considerably. The sensitivity of earnings to education is greater for white males than white females and substantially greater for whites than blacks. When the white sample is divided into age cohorts, the degree of sensitivity of earnings to schooling is found to be greater for younger cohorts than older ones, except for the youngest cohort in 1970. In the conclusion, a structural interpretation of the distribution of earnings is proposed to account for the findings.     

贷款基准利率4倍的界限合理吗

依据我国企业现实收益率和债务负担承受力的考察,也出于维护借贷市场正常秩序的考虑,采用20%的收益率和利率水平为计算上限的分界点比较符合我国国情。为此,应按3倍贷款基准利率来确定政策允许的民间借贷年率上限,它比较符合我国当前的现实。     

Economic Growth and Wage Stagnation in Peru: 1998–2012

From 1998 to 2012, the Peruvian economy exhibited rapid growth. Moreover, the composition of the labor force improved in terms of education and experience, two variables that are typically associated to higher human capital. The average worker in 2012 had a higher level of education and was one and a half years older than in 1998, reflecting the impact of the demographic transition. However, the average real wage was roughly constant. We show that a decline in the wage premium for education, and to a minor extent for experience, is responsible for the lack of growth in the average real wage. Had these two premia remained constant throughout the period of analysis, average labor earnings would have increased by about 2.6% per year, of which 0.7 percentage points are accounted for by the changes in the composition of the labor force in terms of age and education. We explore the role of the relative supply of workers with different levels of human capital as an explanation for the decline in the wage premium for education. Finally, we analyze the implications of these findings for some macroeconomic variables, as earnings and wage inequality, the labor share and total factor productivity.