Human capital investment is of prime interest for many countries at varying stages of development. Knowing both the determinants and the impact of schooling is central for well- designed policy. This dissertation addresses both respects by examining the determinants of secondary school enrollment in Indonesia, and the impact of higher education in South Korea. In Chapter 1, I begin from the observation that many countries spend substantial resources inducing individuals to attend school. Despite this, high dropout rates are common, particularly when students transition between education levels. To explain this pattern, previous research has focused on supply side factors, such as decreased number of school slots or longer commute times. In contrast, this paper explores a demand side reason for high dropout rates between schooling levels: a nonlinear increase in wage returns from completing the final grade of an education level - a sheepskin effect. I investigate whether schooling decisions in Indonesia are consistent with perceived sheepskin effects. Using four types of income shocks that range from idiosyncratic to systemic (unemployment, crop loss, drought, and financial crises), I test if negative shocks affect enrollment differentially across different grade levels. As in the previous literature, negative shocks reduce children's enrollment probabilities on average. However, consistent with perceived sheepskin effects, this impact is strongly mitigated for students who enter the final grades of junior or senior high school. Moreover, even poor households exhibit this behavior indicating that even the poor are able to continue investments in education when they perceive returns to be sufficiently high. The remainder of the dissertation begins from the observation that in low income countries, most gains in education attainment have come from expansions at the primary or secondary level. In contrast, middle and higher income countries have seen rapid increases in higher education enrollments. The pace of growth varies considerably, with historically low attainment countries such as South Korea, Belgium and France experienced more than a 40% point increase in the percentage of population with some tertiary education. Despite the salience of these trends, there is limited credible empirical evidence on their impact due to the difficulty in finding a credible exogenous variation. To address this question, chapters 2 and 3 utilize an unusual policy change in South Korea; the 1980 education reform, which mandated an increase in the freshman enrollment quota by 30 percent nationwide. Chapter 2 (joint work with Wooram Park) estimates the impact of higher education on labor market outcomes and saving behavior of the household. We use the discrete change in the opportunity to obtain higher education across adjacent cohorts to implement a regression discontinuity design. We find that college education has a substantial positive effect on labor income, employment probability as well as on household savings. We also find that college education reduces the probability of job loss during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Chapter 3 (joint work with Jisun Baek and Wooram Park) estimates the causal effect of higher education on health related outcomes. Also using a regression discontinuity design, we confirm that the cohorts that are more likely to be affected by the policy have a higher fraction of individuals with college education. However, we do not find evidence of positive health returns to higher education. In particular, we find that the cohorts with higher proportion of college graduates are not less likely to experience disease or report poor health status. Moreover, we find that higher education has limited effects on health behaviors such as smoking and drinking.

More than 168 million children work worldwide. While some types of work are beneficial for children, some types are detrimental for children's health, growth, education and future well-being. The theory defines poverty and lack of access to credit as main causes of child work. While there is no one-to-one replacement, work reduces the amount of education received by child workers as it competes for children's time. This mix-method dissertation explores child work in two studies: 1) a qualitative study of child work in Tajikistan and 2) a quantitative study of microfinance participation and its effect on global child work and education. The qualitative study of the child work is analyzed through narratives of child workers and their parents in Tajikistan. This study examined the pathways to child work and the families' understanding of child work experiences. Furthermore, the factors causing the increase of child work prevalence in the country and the consequences of children's involvement in the labor market were explored. The children and parent's narratives revealed several common themes. First, the families resort to child work due to financial need. Second, less explored and unconventional perspectives on child work were recorded. Children and parents describe employment as means to become independent and gain respect and status. Moreover, they list becoming socialized and prepared to adult life from early stages of life as a value added to labor market engagement. Child work was also described as means to stay physically healthy and as a protective factor from risk-taking behaviors. The quantitative analysis of this dissertation explores the topic through a broader perspective. The study evaluates the impact of microfinance programs on child economic activity and education globally, using macro data for 113 countries of the world for the period of 15 years (1995-2010). The results of the study suggest that there is a positive association between microfinance and secondary school enrollment. The relationship between microfinance and primary school enrollment, as well as primary school completion is ambiguous. No statistically significant relationship between microfinance and child work was found. Future research directions and implications for policy are examined.

This PhD analyses the factors that affect the existence or absence of coordination in the field of labour market policy for the long-term unemployed in three cities in Great Britain (Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Newcastle). The interest in coordination in public service provision has become more relevant since the state's previously dominant role in services provision gave way to a decentralised and multi-actor landscape. The complexity of social issues also fostered the involvement of multiple organisations. Furthermore, the recent move toward activation in labour market policy has renewed the interest in localised and personalised services, which require coordination. The implications for individuals of the shift toward activation is the main driver for this thesis. Activation has changed the relationship between the state and its citizens, has redefined social exclusion, has individualised responsibility for unemployment, and has increased individuals' obligations to become employed and employable. Also, a greater number of individuals—often with multiple, complex, and overlapping problems—are now required to take part in paid employment. If activation is to effectively support unemployed individuals, its governance would have to facilitate coordination. Even though networks and partnership-working have been buzz-terms in relation to public service planning and delivery for some years, empirically, there is still a question over whether this discourse has resulted in coordination on the ground. Studies of coordination in the field of labour market policies have often focused on the link between social assistance and labour market policy. This research examines instead the coordination between labour market and other related policy areas, as well as the coordination between administrative levels and various service providers. Drawing upon document analysis and semi-structure interviews, this thesis shows that coordination is still elusive in practice and develops a framework of governance that might help to better achieve coordination in service provision.

While the history of the du Pont family and Du Pont Company have been well-documented, little is known about the everyday lives of the Irish Catholic immigrants who lived and worked at the home plant near Wilmington, Delaware. to correct this oversight, "Labor at Home" explores every aspect of the powder workers' domestic world--from religious beliefs, family structure, gender relations, and ethnic ties, to houses, furnishings, and yards--and uses this data to support new conclusions about cultural identity and class affiliation. as early as the 1820s, for example, powder mill families began to convey their increasing affiliation with bourgeois American society by amassing their savings, by selectively purchasing status-laden goods like tea sets and parlor furnishings, by acquiring property, by financing churches and schools, and by pursuing occupational and social mobility. Paradoxically, they also maintained certain beliefs and customs that proclaimed their identity as wage-earning Irish Catholics. Growing potatoes, drinking large quantities of whiskey, displaying crucifixes, and encouraging assertive female behavior perpetuated their unique ethno-religious heritage, yet these practices fueled the prejudices that confined the Irish to the lower ranks of society. Hence, this dissertation further demonstrates that status, identity, and consciousness are determined in complex and often contradictory ways.

Workforce development programs designed to provide individuals with the skills necessary to gain employment have been in existance for over 80 years. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was a federal workforce development program that ran from 2000 to 2014. The WIA provided three main programs: youth, adult, and dislocated worker. The focus of this research was to evaluate the individual services in the adult and dislocated worker programs in the Western Kentucky Workforce Investment Area and identify the most effective service in each program. The adult and dislocated worker programs each offered three tiered services: core, intensive, and training. Individuals entered the core service and progressed until employment was obtained or they exited the programs. The services were evaluated based on the success and failure rates of the outcomes using the reported data retrieved from the Workforce Investment Act Standardized Record Data (WIASRD) database. The number of participants were counted in each service as well as the number of individuals that were employed and not employed after exiting the programs. Individuals employed after exiting the program, were counted as successful outcomes. Individuals that were not employed after exiting the program were counted as unsuccessful outcomes. The study found evidence that the training service was the most effective service in both the adult and dislocated worker programs.

Conflict entails numerous sacrifices in human resources in addition to loss of life, while it is difficult to appraise the real cost of conflict, one can determine the number of fatalities. It is the primary goal of this thesis to develop an accounting technique by which the human capital cost of fatalities due to the Northern Ireland Conflict may be measured in an accepted unit of account. While the development of a model for measuring human capital loss is in itself an important part of the study, the ultimate objective is to arrive at an estimate of the human capital cost of subversive deaths in Northern Ireland. In this analysis a representative individual is used to estimate human capital loss. The expected earnings stream over the relevant number of earnings period, discounted at the appropriate rate of interest and accounting for the probability of death and unemployment within these periods is the definition given to the value of the human capital stock of an individual. The primary data used in this study is that which recorded fatalities due to the conflict. Considering that human capital is an important input in the production function and that conflict tends to destroy the more productive portion of the human capital stock, the long-run effect of losses due to continuing strife and conflict are as yet unknown. In the short-run, however, the conflict is known to exert a heavy toll on the Northern Ireland economy. As of April 1990, the total human capital loss estimate of subversive deaths resulting from the Northern Ireland conflict were £186,993,266 for security forces and £400,493,890 for civilians, resulting in a total estimated loss of £587,487,156.

The earnings gap between men and women has long been a problem of interest to sociologists. Using data provided by the General Social Survey, this thesis addresses this problem by utilizing a causal model that conceptualizes the labor market sector as intervening in the relationships between education and income, and between the absence or presence of children and income among women. The impact of age on these relationships is also considered. Women who have children and a lower educational level do not, it was found, make as much money and work more in the secondary sector than childless, better-educated women. The labor market sector was fund to be an important variable in terms of its impact on the relationships between educational level, the presence of children, and income. However, the labor market sector did not entirely mediate the relationship between the presence of children and income or educational level and income. Direct associations were found between the presence of children and income and educational level and income, but these relationships varied by sector and age. The presence of children did not effect the income of older women in the secondary sector, but did in the primary sector. Educational level did not effect income for either younger or older women in the secondary sector, but did in the primary. The relationship between educational level and income remained strong in the primary sector regardless of age group. An additional difference was found due to age. Younger women were found to have fewer children than older women. Previous research that has been conducted on women and the labor force was reviewed and critiqued and may be useful in more clearly explaining issues related to women's success in the job market.

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurial spirit on immigrant entrepreneurship in the United States. Entrepreneurial spirit refers to attitudes and perceptions towards entrepreneurship, or general self-employment. I address the home country self-employment hypothesis and examine the effect of home country self-employment rates on immigrant self-employment outcomes. I find a negative effect of home country self-employment rates on immigrant self-employment rates and thus, reject the home country self-employment hypothesis. I argue that home country self-employment rates over-estimate entrepreneurial spirit because they are largely driven by the world’s poorest people who are less likely emigrate to the U.S. I address this issue by using immigrants’ home country’s Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) as a measure of immigrant entrepreneurial spirit. I find that the GEI has a positive effect on immigrant self-employment rates, and provide evidence that entrepreneurial spirit has a positive effect on immigrant entrepreneurship in the U.S.

The rise of earnings inequality in the United States has garnered attention in both the political and academic spheres. Recently progressive politicians have pointed towards the divergence of wages and labor productivity as a source of this inequality. known as the productivity-pay gap as a source of the rise in inequality. This paper analyzes that divergence with a regression model that evaluates the change in compensation that is attributable to increases in productivity. Results were somewhat surprising with productivity accounting for a larger portion of the growth in wages for the period after 1972 when the divergence in the two growth rates began than in the time between 1948 and 1972 when they were said to grow together. Additionally, results showed more wage growth was attributable to increases in productivity in goods producing sectors like manufacturing, utilities, and construction than financial intermediation in the services sector. However standard errors across our model were relatively large making it difficult to say with certainty the size of effects observed. Future research should seek to better define productivity in the service sector to determine whether other factors like education, occupation or area of residence affect the level of wage growth attributable to compensation.

This thesis investigates factors that explain for the variation in automation vulnerability of American metropolitan statistical areas. The rapid pace of technological innovation, exemplified by the pursuit of automated vehicles in recent years, is creating growing unease in their power to replace human employment. In certain respects, machines are much more productive and overall better workers than human beings. Decreasing cost in computer capital is also making automation investment more affordable than ever before. However, this is only part of the story. The study attempts to quantify and visualize the variation in regional technological exposure and determine whether industrial and socioeconomic characteristics can reveal an area’s vulnerability.