Education and the labour market : three essays on interrelations and multiple effects during lifetime
(2010)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Vandenberghe, Vincent
- Abstract
- (en) This thesis aims at exploring the ties between education and the labour market. It is a micro-analysis of the effects of education on individual labour market outcomes and vice versa, from adolescence till retirement, using both theoretical and empirical tools. The first chapter is a critical discussion of the relevant literature and an introduction to the rest of the chapters. We discuss the special features of the Belgian education system and labour market and explain why we chose Belgium as the country of interest. Finally, we give a brief outline of the methodological tools we are using. The second chapter discusses how family income and parental work status influence children’s secondary school track choices, which is a significant determinant of future school attendance and labour market outcomes. Our results suggest that income has no significant effect on track choices after we control for (observed and unobserved) family characteristics. This conclusion is in line with the relevant literature. On the other hand, parental work status affects track choices. An unemployed father significantly increases the probability that his child will choose a less promising school track. The third chapter decomposes the effect of schooling on earnings into three separate effects: on wages, unemployment and labour supply. We argue that the true effect of schooling on earnings is a composition of higher wages, less unemployment and increased labour supply. This contrasts the mincerian approach that schooling mainly results to increased wages. At the same time we show that different school tracks imply different gains from education; hence not only years in education but also the type of education course matters. Finally we find complementarities between general and vocational school qualifications. In the fourth chapter we develop a theoretical model of lifetime human capital and earnings with endogenous retirement. The model is then adjusted to different retirement schemes, and the initial findings change accordingly. The main conclusion is that, in most cases high skilled workers retire later. In our model, this is not a consequence of later labour market entrance, but is a result of higher lifetime earnings and higher opportunity cost of retirement for the high skilled. Different schemes change retirement incentives for the high skilled. At the extreme, a retirement scheme that fully compensates workers for past income could drive high skilled workers earlier outside the labour market. In principle however, retirement implies a higher income loss for the high skilled, therefore they choose a longer working career.
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Citations
Karasiotou, P. (2010). Education and the labour market : three essays on interrelations and multiple effects during lifetime. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/129571