Assessing the Impact of Human Capital on Jobs and Political Attitudes

这项拟议的研究将利用大量发展中国家的证据，研究劳动力市场机会和政治态度在过去几十年里如何随着人口水平教育水平的提高而发生变化。尽管几个国家迅速培养了大量熟练工人，但它们却难以创造良好的就业机会来吸纳这些受过教育的劳动力。很大一部分低技能工人就业不足，而许多高技能工人失业并等待工作。这种劳动力市场失灵令经济学家感到困惑，他们研究了在经济发展过程中，工人如何从生产率较低的农业部门转移到生产率较高的非农部门。研究结果将有助于发展经济学的微观和宏观研究，并为创造就业和减少贫困的政策制定提供参考。该项目将促进研究生教育，产生新的教育数据集，并为教育政策提供投入。这项研究的结果将指导教育政策以及民主在全球的传播。这项研究项目将利用公开的个人层面的人口普查数据和其他数据集，以及由免费初等教育(FPE)法律产生的受教育机会的政策驱动变化来调查两个问题：(I)增加教育是否会改变就业预期，如果是，它对劳动力市场结果有什么影响？(Ii)教育导致的失业增加是否会导致人们对民主的信心下降？教育政策研究所开发了一个简单的理论模型，包括教育、劳动力市场成果对民主的信念，并应用差异差异(DIFF-AND-DIFF)和回归差异不连续性(RD-In-DIFF)技术来生成额外教育对就业结果和政治态度影响的因果证据。PI依赖于各国教育政策变化的随机变化和一段时间的识别。PI将通过在每个国家实施一套一致的研究方法来确定人力资本对劳动力市场的影响，从而提供对发展中国家劳动力市场的新理解，而不是跨国分析。这项研究的结果将指导世界上几个地区的教育政策制定。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This proposed research will study how labor market opportunities and political attitudes have changed in response to population-level schooling gains over the last several decades, drawing on evidence from a large number of developing countries. While several countries rapidly train a large pool of skilled workers, they struggle to create good jobs to absorb this educated labor force. Large fractions of low-skilled workers are underemployed, while many of the highly skilled are unemployed and waiting for jobs. This labor market dysfunction is puzzling to economists who have study how workers shift from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity non-farm sectors during the process of economic development. The research results will be helpful for both micro- and macro-oriented research in development economics and inform policy making to create jobs and reduce poverty. This project will contribute graduate education, generate new data sets on education, as well as provide inputs into education policy. The results of this research will guide educational policy as well as the spread of democracy across the globe. This research project will leverage publicly available individual-level census data and other data sets and policy-driven variation in access to education generated by free primary education (FPE) laws to investigate two issues: (i) does increased education change job expectations and if so, what impact does it have on labor market outcomes?; (ii) does education-induced increase in unemployment lead to decrease faith in democracy? The PI develops a simple theoretical model education, labor market outcomes beliefs in democracy, and apply difference-in-differences (diff-and-diff) and regression discontinuity-in-differences (RD-in-diff) techniques to generate causal evidence of the impact of additional education on employment outcomes, and on political attitudes. The PI relies on random variation in changes in education policies across countries and through time for identification. Instead of cross-country analyses, the PI will provide new understanding about labor markets in developing countries by implementing a consistent set of research methodologies in each country, to identify the impacts of human capital on labor markets. The results of this research will guide educational policy making in several parts of the world.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.