Topic Education

Local Unemployment and Postsecondary Education

This study uses administrative data on the universe of students in tertiary education in Germany and shows that university enrollment depends negatively on the local unemployment rate at high school graduation. This finding contradicts common evidence on countercyclical US undergraduate enrollment. Students' financial dependency and loan aversion suggest reduced parental income as dominant...

Parental Leave Policy and Long-run Earnings of Mothers

Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women’s employment rates but to decrease their wages in case of extended leave duration. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers’ long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested ...

The Transition to Grandparenthood: No Consistent Evidence for Change in the Big Five Personality Traits and Life Satisfaction

Intergenerational relations have received close attention in the context of population aging and increased childcare provision by grandparents. However, few studies have investigated the psychological consequences of becoming a grandparent. In a preregistered test of grandparenthood as a developmental task in middle and older adulthood, we used representative panel data from the Netherlands (N = 563) ...

Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third-grade academic rank, conditional on achievement and classroom fixed effects, have higher subsequent test scores, are more likely to ...

Gender Care Gap and Gender Pay Gap Increase Substantially until Middle Age

While the gender pay gap between men and women in Germany remains at 18 percent, this figure is not the same for all employees. There are, for example, major differences by age. Beginning at age 30, the gender pay gap increases sharply and remains constantly high at 20 percent until retirement. Closely related to this is the gender care gap, the difference in unpaid care work between women and men. ...

The Long Reach of Class Origin on Financial Investments and Net Worth

In this study, we argue that parents' class position may influence the type and timing of their offspring's investments in financial assets. These investments may facilitate net worth accumulation beyond direct transfers, contributing to the intergenerational reproduction of social positions. We test these expectations using retrospective life history and prospective panel data for 14 countries from ...

The Youth Mental Health Crisis during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of School Closures

Intergenerational Returns to Migration: Evidence from Italian Immigrants Worldwide

Using a unique administrative dataset on Italians living abroad, we estimate the effect of parental migration on the education, employment and income opportunities of descendants in the host country. We compare Italian second-generation immigrants with Italians residing in Italy having similar observable characteristics, such as age, sex, Italian region of origin and...

Information, preferences, and household demand for school value-added

Social Media and Allyship in the Black Lives Matter Movement