Essays on Human Capital and Labour Supply

Lena Hassani Nezhad, Melanie Luhrmann, Dan Anderberg

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

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Abstract

Human capital obtained by individuals during their life-cycle is one of the key factors contributing to a prosperous society. Human capital, in terms of education and/or work experience, leads to higher wages and therefore higher welfare of a nation. Therefore, policies encouraging employment or to acquire higher education could be potentially welfare improving. My thesis comprises of two chapters in which I study the issues related to human capital. These chapters contribute to a better understanding of the impact of policies
on the process of human capital accumulation.

In the firrst chapter "Employment, Human Capital, Marriage, Fertility, and Child Care", I tackle the question of how part-time employment affects wages and future labour supply of women and evaluate the effectiveness of child care subsidies on the process of human capital accumulation. I develop and estimate a dynamic model of employment, marital, and fertility decisions. In the model, labour supply, fertility and parental child investments are jointly determined. Household decisions are modelled in a Nash bargaining framework, where outside options are specied as spouses' value of making decisions as single agents. I use the estimated model for an ex-ante evaluation of the impact of child care subsidies on wages and employment decisions of women in the United States.

The second chapter of my thesis focuses on ex-post evaluation of 2012-2013 education reform in the UK on children's aspirations toward education. Using a difference-in-difference estimator, it can be shown that the reform decreased aspirations towards education of children in England and the decrease in aspirations is larger for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationPh.D.
Awarding Institution
  • Royal Holloway, University of London
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Gemici, Ahu, Supervisor
  • Anderberg, Dan, Supervisor
Award date1 Feb 2018
Publication statusUnpublished - 7 Dec 2017

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