JHR News & Research Highlights

March 9, 2018March 13, 2018

A Two-Child Limit Imposed on Political Candidates in India—Does It Work?

probability of third child and sex ratio before and after two-child policy

In India, policy-makers have looked to population control as a means of increasing resources per capita and reducing widespread poverty. Since 1992, eleven Indian states have experimented with restricting elected village council positions to candidates with two or fewer children. The hope is that leaders with small families would inspire their constituents to follow suit. In a new study, researchers S. Anukriti (Boston College) and Abhishek Chakravarty (University of Manchester) found the policy was effective in reducing family sizes, but it worsened the sex ratio as families favored boys.
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March 8, 2018March 8, 2018

When Families Want Sons, Do Daughters Get an Education?

Gender bias in families is evident in many regions, but the evidence to date does not allow us to fully understand its effects. Stacy H. Chen (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, GRIPS), Yen-Chien Chen (Chi-Nan University, Taiwan), and Jin-Tan Liu (National Taiwan University and NBER) studied the educational outcomes of children in more than 965,000 families in Taiwan to better understand the experiences of daughters and sons.
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https://uwpress.wisc.edu/jhr-news/?p=291

March 5, 2018March 5, 2018

Financial Aid Accelerates College Graduation

Financial aid can affect who goes to college. But how does financial aid affect students already in college who would attend even without the aid? In a new study, Jeffrey T. Denning (Brigham Young University) examines the effect of additional financial aid on these students. He finds that additional aid speeds up graduation for university seniors and increases persistence to the next year for sophomores and juniors.
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https://uwpress.wisc.edu/jhr-news/?p=283

February 15, 2018

For-Profit Schools Are Not Improving the Earnings of Their Graduates

In “Gainfully employed? New evidence on the earnings, employment, and debt of for-profit certificate students,” Stephanie Riegg Cellini (Brown Center on Education Policy) reports on her work with Nicholas Turner (Federal Reserve Board of Governors). They studied 14 years of earnings for more than 800,000 federally aided certificate students to determine how well for-profit schools are doing.
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January 29, 2018January 29, 2018

Preschool and Parents’ Reactions in a Developing Country: Evidence from a School Construction Experiment in Cambodia

Studies from low-, middle-, and high-income countries show that children brought up in a more favorable early environment benefit in the long run. They are healthier, taller, have higher cognitive ability and educational attainment, and earn significantly higher wages. As a result, preschool construction programs are often assumed to hold considerable promise to increase school readiness while reducing socioeconomic gaps in human capital development. Researchers Adrien Bouguen (University of Mannheim), Deon Filmer (World Bank), Karen Macours (Paris School of Economics and INRA), and Sophie Naudeau (World Bank) examined a school construction project in Cambodia to see if this kind of effort had the desired results. They found that a poor understanding of parent response may be at the heart of the program’s disappointing results.
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https://uwpress.wisc.edu/jhr-news/?p=266

January 23, 2018January 23, 2018

Job Corps Improves Earnings, Employment, and Use of Public Benefits…Even for Eligible Nonparticipants

Government-sponsored job training programs are believed to be essential to improve the job prospects of economically disadvantaged citizens and reduce dependence on safety net programs, but do they work? Job Corps is the main federal training program in the United States targeted at disadvantaged youth ages 16 to 24. Xuan Chen (Renmin University of China), Carlos A. Flores (California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo), and Alfonso Flores-Lagunes (Syracuse University) measure the effectiveness of Job Corps training and find a positive effect on three important outcomes—earnings, employment, and amount of public benefits received.
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https://uwpress.wisc.edu/jhr-news/?p=258

January 10, 2018January 23, 2018

Education Next Highlights JHR Dell Scholars Article

Researchers Stacy S. Kehoe and Lindsay C. Page unpack the implications of their Dell Scholars research in an article for Education Next. They find that the Dell Scholars Program improves students’ college persistence, academic performance, and likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree.
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December 18, 2017December 18, 2017

Is Murder Insurance a Good Idea?

A ForeignPolicy.com article looks at the scrutiny faced by Lloyd’s of London for underwriting NRA insurance products for gun owners and gun show promoters, including products that cover costs from criminal and civil defense suits.
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December 15, 2017December 15, 2017

Head Start’s Long-Run Impact

Because experiences in early childhood are known to influence child development, preschool programs are often viewed as policy interventions with the most potential to improve the prospects of children from low-income families. In a new study, Owen Thompson (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) examined the impact of Head Start on a variety of socioeconomic outcomes for participants through age 48.
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https://uwpress.wisc.edu/jhr-news/?p=239

December 7, 2017December 7, 2017

“Growth” in Black–White Test Gap Is Due to Poor Measurement

Our understanding of the age at which the black–white test gap emerges has been hampered by two overlooked factors. Timothy N. Bond (Purdue University) and Kevin Lang (Boston University) address these issues in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Human Resources.
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