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The change to the minimum school-leaving age in the United Kingdom from 14 to 15 had a powerful and immediate effect that redirected almost half the population of 14-year-olds in the mid-twentieth century to stay in school for one more year. The magnitude of this impact provides a rare opportunity to (a) estimate local average treatment effects (LATE) of high school that come close to population average treatment effects (ATE); and (b) estimate returns to education using a regression discontinuity design instead of previous estimates that rely on difference-in-differences methodology or relatively weak instruments. Comparing LATE estimates for the United States and Canada, where very few students were affected by compulsory school laws, to the United Kingdom estimates provides a test as to whether instrumental variables (IV) returns to schooling often exceed ordinary least squares (OLS) because gains are high only for small and peculiar groups among the more general population. I find, instead, that the benefits from compulsory schooling are very large whether these laws have an impact on a majority or minority of those exposed.

Increasing wealth provides key motivation for students to forgo earnings and struggle through exams. But, as we argue in this paper, schooling generates many experiences and affects many dimensions of skill that, in turn, affect central aspects of individuals' lives. Schooling not only affects income, but also the degree to which one enjoys work, as well as one's likelihood of being unemployed. It leads individuals to make better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting. It also improves patience, making individuals more goal-oriented and less likely to engage in risky behavior. Schooling improves trust and social interaction, and may offer substantial consumption value to some students. We discuss various mechanisms to explain how these relationships may occur independent of wealth effects and present evidence that nonpecuniary returns to schooling are at least as large as pecuniary ones. Ironically, one explanation why some early school leavers miss out on these high returns is that they lack the very same decision-making skills that more schooling would help improve.

Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. We present results from a randomized field experiment in which low-income individuals receiving tax preparation help were also offered immediate assistance and a streamlined process to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for themselves or their children. Treated participants were also provided with aid estimates that were compared against tuition cost amounts for nearby colleges. The combined assistance and information treatment substantially increased FAFSA submissions and ultimately the likelihood of college attendance, persistence, and aid receipt. In particular, high school seniors whose parents received the treatment were 8 percentage points more likely to have completed two years of college, going from 28% to 36%, during the first three years following the experiment. Families who received aid information but no assistance with the FAFSA did not experience improved outcomes. The findings suggest many other opportunities for using personal assistance to increase participation in programs that require filling out forms to become eligible.

Recent research suggests that the college application process itself prevents access. This paper reports results from a school-based experiment in which application assistance is incorporated into the high school curriculum for all graduating seniors at low-transition schools. Over three workshops, students were guided to pick programs of interest that they were eligible for, apply for real, and complete the financial aid application. The goal was to create a real college option for exiting students to make the transition easier and more salient. Among all graduating seniors, the program increased application rates by 15 percentage points, and college going rates by 5 percentage points. Among those not taking advanced-level courses, college enrollment increased by 9 percentage points. The program generated significant effects for a wide range of heterogeneous groups, including both males and females, those from urban and rural schools, and those with above and below average grades. While more intensive than other tested approaches, in-class application assistance may provide a more effective approach for bridging the gap towards higher education.

This paper analyzes the magnitude and sources of long-term earnings declines associated with graduating from college during a recession. Using a large longitudinal university-employer-employee dataset, we find that the cost of recessions for new graduates is substantial and unequal. Unlucky graduates suffer persistent earnings declines lasting ten years. They start to work for lower paying employers, and then partly recover through a gradual process of mobility toward better firms. We document that more advantaged graduates suffer less from graduating in recessions because they switch to better firms quickly, while earnings of less advantaged graduates can be permanently affected by cyclical downgrading.

Thousands of randomly manipulated resumes were sent in response to online job postings in Toronto to investigate why immigrants, allowed in based on skill, struggle in the labor market. The study finds substantial discrimination across a variety of occupations towards applicants with foreign experience or those with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Greek names compared with English names. Listing language fluency, multinational firm experience, education from highly selective schools, or active extracurricular activities had no diminishing effect. Recruiters justify this behavior based on language skill concerns but fail to fully account for offsetting features when listed.

This article uses variation induced by firm closures to explore the intergenerational effects of worker displacement using a Canadian panel of administrative data that follows more than 39,000 father‐son pairs from 1978 to 1999. We find that children whose fathers were displaced have annual earnings about 9% lower than similar children whose fathers did not experience an employment shock. They are also more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social assistance. The estimates are driven by the experiences of children whose family income was at the bottom of the income distribution.

We use administrative data on a sample of births between 1978 and 1985 to investigate the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of poor infant health. Our findings offer several advances to the existing literature on the effects of early infant health on subsequent health, education, and labor force attachment. First, we use a large sample of both siblings and twins, second, we use a variety of measures of infant health, and finally, we track children through their schooling years and into the labor force. Our findings suggest that poor infant health predicts both mortality within one year, and mortality up to age 17. We also find that infant health is a strong predictor of educational and labor force outcomes. In particular, infant health is found to predict both high school completion and welfare takeup and length.

One-on-one coaching programs tend to have large effects on student outcomes, but they are costly to scale. In contrast, interventions that rely on technology to maintain contact with students can be scaled at low cost but may be less effective than one-on-one assistance. We randomly assign more than 4,000 students from a large Canadian university into control, online exercise, text messaging, and one-on-one coaching groups and find large effects on academic outcomes from the coaching program but no effects from either technology-based intervention. A comparison of key design features suggests that future technology-based interventions should aim to provide proactive, personalized, and regular support.

Compulsory school laws have existed for more than a hundred years, and policies to mandate further education continue to be discussed. The implications of these laws, however, are not well understood. Historical changes to compulsory schooling in Canada permit an examination of their effects on would-be-dropouts under very different circumstances than those during changes in other countries. Mandating education substantially increased adult income and substantially decreased the likelihood of being below the low-income cut-off unemployed, and in a manual occupation. These findings suggest significant gains from this legislation, which seem unlikely offset by the costs incurred while having to remain in school.