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This paper investigates whether the early experience of non-employment has a causal impact on workers' subsequent career. The analysis is based on a sample of low educated youth graduating between 1994 and 2002 in Flanders (Belgium). To correct for selective incidence of non-employment, [the author] instrument[s] early non-employment by the provincial unemployment rate at graduation. Since the instrument is clustered at the province-graduation year level and the number of clusters is small, inference is based on wild bootstrap methods. [The author] find[s] that one percentage point increase in the proportion of time spent in non-employment during the first two and a half years of the career decreases annual earnings from salaried employment six years after graduation by 10 per cent and annual hours worked by seven per cent (unconditional effects). Thus, any policy that prevents unemployment in the first place will be beneficial. In addition, curative policies at the micro level may be required, depending on the actual cause of the scar.

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In June 2003, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), with funding from the European Social Fund, launched a General Formal Investigation (GFI) into gender segregation in the following five occupational areas, where skill shortages exist and where gender segregation is most prevalent: construction, engineering, plumbing, information and communications technology (ICT), and childcare. The first stage of the research program was this study undertaken by the Institute of Employment Studies (IES). It involved a literature review of factors influencing gender segregation and a statistical analysis of occupational segregation, and gender gaps. It also investigated the skill deficits in these sectors and the extent to which the sectors considered recruiting from the under-represented sex as a means of addressing the deficits. The study found that: while there are a large number of government education and training initiatives currently underway, there is a lack of explicit recognition of equal opportunity and gender segregation issues and this is likely to lead to reinforcement of traditional gender divisions in education and training; some policies appear to disadvantage young parents within the vocational/work-based learning strand of provision compared with young people pursuing other forms of learning; occupation segregation is one of the strongest influences on young people’s career choice; parental attitudes have a significant impact on career decisions of young people; employment in ICT is less gender segregated than employment in the other four sectors; Modern Apprentices (MAs) in the five sectors remain extremely gender segregated; and skill shortages exist in all five sectors. The contents are: Executive summary; Introduction; Policy and legislative background; Issues driving research into segregation; Theories of stereotyping and segregation; Factors influencing job choice; European funded initiatives on atypical work; Sectoral analysis; Conclusions. Show less

The central issue this project seeks to address is the relationship between volunteering, active citizenship and community participation for young Australians. The study used three surveys from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) project and three different forms of analysis were undertaken, univariate, bivariate and multivariate. The project aims to clarify those aspects of the relationship between students’ demographic and school background variables, and active citizenship (defined by volunteering), which were conducive to greater participation. A number of variables including gender, ethnicity, reading and writing achievement, socioeconomic status and place of residence were considered. The study found that four variables significantly contributed to volunteering activity: gender, socioeconomic status, home language and size of home community. Show less

Building on the work of Baker and Drolet (2010) and Drolet (2011), this study examines the evolution of the gender gap in average hourly wages since 1998. In choosing to examine hourly wages, as opposed to other measures of earnings, this study highlights gender differences in pay for an equal unit of work. The analysis includes both full- and part-time employees, and is restricted to people in the core working ages of 25 to 54. Specifically, this study addresses three questions: How did the gender wage gap in 2018 compare with the gap in 1998? What factors contributed to the narrowing of the gender wage gap between 1998 and 2018? What factors explained the remaining gender wage gap in 2018, and did these factors differ from those that explained the gap in 1998?

Highlights: (1) in 2018, female employees aged 25 to 54 earned $4.13 (or 13.3 per cent) less per hour, on average, than their male counterparts; in other words, these women earned $0.87 for every dollar earned by men; (2) the gender gap in hourly wages has narrowed by $1.04 (or 5.5 percentage points) since 1998, when it was $5.17 (or 18.8 per cent); (3) the reduction in the gender wage gap between 1998 and 2018 was largely explained by changes in the distribution of men and women across occupations; women's increased educational attainment; and the decline in the share of men in unionized employment; (4) the two largest factors explaining the remaining gender wage gap in 2018 were the distribution of women and men across industries, and women's overrepresentation in part-time work; these were also the largest explanatory factors behind the gap in 1998; and (5) similar to other studies, nearly two-thirds of the gap in 2018 was unexplained; possible explanations for this portion include gender differences in characteristics that were beyond the scope of this study, such as work experience, as well as unobservable factors, such as any gender-related biases.

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This publication provides a snapshot of information on adult and community education (ACE) delivered by publicly funded providers who report to the national vocational education and training (VET) data collection. It reviews the structure of ACE in Australia, trends on ACE participation and training activity, ACE students by selected characteristics, ACE courses and training outcomes. Show less

Summary statistics continue to play an important role in identifying and monitoring patterns and trends in educational inequalities between differing groups of pupils over time. However, this article argues that their uncritical use can also encourage the labelling of whole groups of pupils as 'underachievers' or 'overachievers' as the findings of group-level data are simply applied to individual group members, a practice commonly termed the 'ecological fallacy'. Some of the adverse consequences of this will be outlined in relation to current debates concerning gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be argued that one way of countering this uncritical use of summary statistics, and the ecological fallacy that it tends to encourage, is to make much more use of the principles and methods of what has been termed 'exploratory data analysis'. Such an approach is illustrated through a secondary analysis of data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales, focusing on gender and ethnic differences in educational attainment. It will be shown that, by placing an emphasis on the graphical display of data and on encouraging researchers to describe those data more qualitatively, such an approach represents an essential addition to the use of simple summary statistics and helps to avoid the limitations associated with them.

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During the past decade both Australia and China have implemented reforms to their educational systems to develop labour force skills for the new globalised markets. This report describes the major features of the vocational education and training sectors in China and Australia, and their strategies and reforms, with emphasis on links between secondary and post-secondary vocational education and training.

Published abstract from the NCVER website. Show less

Estimation of the causal effect of parental migration on children's educational attainment is complicated by the fact that migrants and non-migrants are likely to differ in unobservable ways that also affect children's educational outcomes. This paper suggests a novel way of addressing this selection problem by looking within the family to exploit variation in siblings' ages at the time of parental migration. The basic assumption underlying the analysis is that parental migration will have no effect on the educational outcomes of children who are at least 20 because they have already completed their educations. Their younger siblings, in contrast, may still be in school, and thus will be affected by the parental migration experience. The results point to a statistically significant positive effect of paternal US migration on education for girls, suggesting that pushing a father's US migration earlier in his daughter's life can lead to an increase in her educational attainment of up to one year relative to delaying migration until after she has turned 20. In contrast, paternal domestic migration has no statistically significant effect on educational attainment for girls or boys, suggesting that father absence does not play a major role in determining children's educational outcomes. Instead, these results suggest that the marginal dollars from US migrant remittances appear to enable families to further educate their daughters. Thus, policymakers should view international migration as a potential pathway by which families raise educational attainments of girls in particular.

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This report is the 12th edition of an annual series providing information on how successfully the Australian education and training system is working to meet the needs of young Australians as they make the transition from school to further study and work. Commissioned by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) and prepared by the Centre for Post-compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning (CPELL) at the University of Melbourne, and draws on a range of sources including the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). This year’s report reveals that despite Australia’s overall economic recovery, young people continue to feel the negative impacts of the global financial crisis. It shows that the number of teenagers not in full-time education or work remains as high now as it was in 2009, when unemployment spiked as a result of the global economic downturn. The proportion of teenagers ‘disengaged’ from work or education has stayed at 16.4 per cent, with 246,000 teenagers currently not in full-time education or work. The report also shows that: for 15 to 19 year-old males, the level of ‘disengagement’ rose from 15.3 per cent to 16 per cent; the unemployment rate for teenage males not in full-time education rose from 18.2 per cent to 18.8 per cent, compared to the current adult unemployment rate of just five per cent; the number of teenagers starting apprenticeships and traineeships dropped by more than 15,000 between 2008 and 2009, with two thirds of these lost opportunities occurring in male-dominated trade occupations; the teenage unemployment rate fell slightly from 18.5 per cent to 17.9 per cent, but remains well above the 12.2 per cent unemployment level seen before the financial crisis in 2008; and almost one quarter of 20 to 24 year-olds are not engaged in full-time work or full-time education in 2010, a slight improvement over the situation in the previous year. This report tells us that while Australia leads the global economic recovery, there are still far too many young Australians who are not reaping the rewards of education or employment. Show less

Young adults aged 19-24 are significantly less likely to have health insurance since most family insurance policies cut off dependents when they turn 19 or finish college. In recent years, several states in the United States have expanded eligibility to allow young adults to remain covered under their parents' employer-provided health insurance. For those who qualify for these benefits, the expansion of parental coverage partially reduces the value of being employed by a firm that provides health insurance or working full-time, as adult children can now obtain health insurance through another channel. In this study, we employ quasiexperimental variation in the timing and generosity of states' eligibility rules to identify the effect of the policy change on young adults' labor market choices. Our results suggest that the expansion of parental coverage increases the group dependent coverage rate and reduces labor supply among young adults, particularly in full-time employment.

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