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Title: Achievement and Attitude: the Role of Cognitive Skills and Affective Traits in the Determination of Labor Market Outcomes for Young Women
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Braatz, Margaret Jay |
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Achievement and Attitude: the Role of Cognitive Skills and Affective Traits in the Determination of Labor Market Outcomes for Young Women Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1999 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Education; Education, Secondary; Hispanics; Labor Force Participation; Self-Esteem; Wages, Women; Women's Studies Changes in the economy-the rapid restructuring of US industry, competitive pressures, and technological innovation-have forced the upgrading of occupational skill requirements and increased the role of skills in determining labor force outcomes. Since 1979, two economic trends-a sharp rise in the wage advantage associated with education and the growing wage inequality among workers with the same schooling-have been explained, in part, as an increase in the demand for more skilled workers. However, almost all of the research attention has focused on males and few studies have explored the role of different dimensions of skills unmeasured on traditional tests of academic competencies, despite increasing belief in their importance in the marketplace. Concurrent with the significant economic changes in the labor market as a whole, there have been broad shifts in women's economic status. Over the last twenty-five years women's labor force participation has risen steeply. Today, across all races and ethnicities and across all educational levels and ages, women who work are the rule, rather than the exception. This thesis is comprised of two essays that explore the effects of cognitive skills and affective traits, measured during the high school years, on the subsequent labor market success of young women. The first essay focuses on the impact of skills and traits on the probability of employment and, for those women who are employed, the number of hours worked annually. The second essay focuses on the role these same skills and traits play in the determination of a woman's log wages, for those who do work for pay. Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NYSY) 1979-1994 interviews. The results show that cognitive skills are a major determinant of labor market outcomes for young women, whether they are White, Black or Hispanic, and regardless of educational level. The effect of affective traits is less important, however: while self-esteem has an impact on whether a women works and how many hours she works in 1994, there is no evidence that affective traits impact wages for my sample. |
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Bibliography Citation
Braatz, Margaret Jay. Achievement and Attitude: the Role of Cognitive Skills and Affective Traits in the Determination of Labor Market Outcomes for Young Women. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1999. |