Browsing by Subject "Recession"
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Item Open Access Essays on Education Policy(2013) Francis, Dania VeronicaThis dissertation consists of three essays on the topic of education policy. In the first essay, I evaluate the impacts of a teacher quality equity law that was enacted in California in the fall of 2006 prohibiting superintendents from transferring a teacher into a school in the bottom three performance deciles of the state's academic performance index if the principal refuses the transfer. The primary mechanism through which the policy should affect student outcomes is through the mix of the quality of teachers in the school. Using publicly available statewide administrative education data, and two quasi-experimental methodologies, I assess whether the policy had an effect on the district-wide distribution of teachers with varying levels of experience, education and licensure and on student academic performance. I extend the analysis by examining whether the policy has differential effects on subgroups of schools classified as having high-poverty or high-minority student populations. I find that, as a result of the teacher quality equity law, low-performing schools experienced a relative increase in fully-credentialed teachers and more highly educated teachers, but that did not necessarily translate to an increase in academic performance. I also find evidence that the dimension along which the policy was most effective was in improving teacher pre-service qualifications in schools with high minority student populations.
In the second essay, I estimate racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic differences in teacher reports of student absenteeism and tardiness while controlling for administrative records of actual absences. Subjective perceptions that teachers form about students' classroom behaviors matter for student academic outcomes. Given this potential impact, it is important to identify any biases in these perceptions that would disadvantage subgroups of students. I use longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 in conjunction with longitudinal, student-level data from the North Carolina Education Data Research Center to employ a variation of a two sample instrumental variables approach in which I instrument for actual eighth grade absences with simulated measures of eight grade absences. I find consistent evidence that teacher reports of the attendance of poor students are negatively biased and that math teacher reports of male attendance are positively biased. There is mixed evidence with regard to student race and ethnicity.
The third essay is a co-authored work in which we employ a quasi-experimental estimation strategy to examine the effects of state-level job losses on fourth- and eighth-grade test scores, using federal Mass Layoff Statistics and 1996-2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1 percent of a state's working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state's eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2 percent of its workers (a magnitude observed in seven states) likely sees a 16 percent increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind.
Item Open Access The job stability of men working in gender non-traditional jobs(2011-04-22) Domnisoru, CiprianAnalyzing Current Population Survey (CPS) Tenure Supplements from 2004 through 2010 and five years of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 cohort (NLSY97) data from 2004-2008, I find that the job stability of men working in gender non-traditional occupations is lower than that of men in gender traditional or gender neutral occupations. Looking at a classification of gender non-traditional occupations into educational, medical and secretarial, I find significant differences between the three groups, with high tenure in the first and low tenure in the other two. These findings contradict some of the (feminist) sociological literature that suggests men have higher job stability in gender non-traditional occupations because of upward mobility expectations and preferential treatment from male managers and supervisors. The assertion that for men, job stability is a benefit of working in gender non-traditional occupations is widely publicized by community college career websites, state departments of education, some academic studies and organizations of professionals working in gender non-traditional occupations. Such a generalization is simply misleading, as this study shows. Additional findings in this study contribute to the literature on the outcomes of men working in gender non-traditional occupations. I find that men employed in these occupations are more likely to have been threatened to be hurt at school, to have been raised in a Catholic household and less likely to have been raised in a Baptist household. My study finds evidence that self-reported job satisfaction is highest among men in gender non-traditional occupations, raising further questions about the utility that some men find in working in these occupations, given that their choices contradict theories of occupational choice (Gottfredson) and identity (Akerlof and Kranton).Item Open Access The Value of a College Degree in a Recession(2011-04-29) Tricoli, ChristenSituated within the realm of a prestigious American university, I sought to examine how the “Great Recession” is experienced by current Duke seniors and recent graduates, and how it can be contextualized within a debate about the value of a college degree during the job search. I also wondered how these experiences compare to Duke alumni from past years of recession, as well as the expectations of high school seniors planning to enter college in the fall of 2011. After conducting personal, conversational interviews with Duke University alumni who graduated between 1973-1975, 1981-1982, and 1990-1991, current and recent seniors from the class of 2010 and 2011, and high school students in an accelerated magnet program, I discovered that every single participant believed that a college education is the best means of finding a “successful” work position in America. Alumni, college seniors, and college-bound high school seniors alike fell along a continuum of enthusiasm for their education that was almost entirely positive. Though the uncertainty of unemployment during a recession might call into question the viability of a degree, there is still a strong belief in education as a means of secure social mobility.Item Open Access U.S./China Trade Disputes in the post-Recession Political Landscape(2013-12-30) Ruby, EthanThis paper investigates the connection between the recent economic recession and an increase in trade disputes between the United States and China. Overall, I conclude political factors exacerbated by the recession, rather than economic considerations, were the catalyst for an increase in disputes. Misconceptions by the American public concerning the importance of manufacturing in the U.S. economy, political rhetoric, and fear of China’s rise led the United States to implement a series of economically ill- advised protectionist tariffs on Chinese goods. These tariffs in turn lead to an increase in WTO disputes between the United States and China. Given the severe economic consequences and the growing importance of Sino-American trade relations, it is imperative the United States actively seeks to curb protectionism and reduce trade disputes with China.Item Open Access Well-being Across Changing Social Landscapes(2018) Bartlett, BryceLow subjective well-being arises from differences between experiences and expectations, often identified through social comparisons. Many studies have investigated how individual exposures to a recessive period associates with contemporaneous changes in subjective well-being, finding inconsistent results. The studies collected here expand prior research by (1) examining contemporaneous associations between subjective well-being and unemployment rates before, during, and after a recession and by (2) investigating whether recessions influence subjective well-being in a more persistent manner through Cohort Socialization. This mechanism predicts first that exposure to recessions in young adulthood changes individual outlooks. Second, it predicts that these differences in outlooks correlate with differences in subjective well-being.
I use the General Social Survey (GSS) repeated cross-sections (1994-2014) and three GSS three-wave panels (2006-2014) to investigate this conceptual model. I analyze these data with various logistic regression models, including hierarchical models for panel data. These studies find a negative association between subjective well-being and contemporaneous unemployment rates across the study period. In addition, these studies find a persistent effect (exceeding five years) of exposure to recessive periods during young adulthood. First, those who experienced a recession in young adulthood have different average levels of subjective well-being from those who did not. Second, exposure to a short recession (near 6 months) in young adulthood (ages 18-22) is associated with higher subjective well-being, while exposure to a long recession (over 16 months) is associated with lower subjective well-being. Third, differences in intergenerational comparative expectations—how people compare their own standard of living to that of their parents and children—is a difference in outlook that partially mediates the observed differences in subjective well-being.