Date of Award
8-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Economics
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. Devon Gorry
Committee Member
Dr. Jonathan Leganza
Committee Member
Dr. Curtis Simon
Committee Member
Dr. Aspen Gorry
Abstract
The dissertation consists of three essays: the first two discuss the effect of American high school vocational education on individuals' labor market and educational outcomes, and the third essay explores the effect of unilateral divorce laws on women's labor force participation rates. In the first chapter, treating vocational class choice as a continuous variable, I used family-fixed effects to investigate the average effect of American high school vocational classes on students' labor market and educational outcomes. The findings indicate that high school vocational classes significantly decrease the likelihood of attending a four-year college but do not significantly affect other educational outcomes. This paper also finds that the positive effects of vocational classes on labor market outcomes are not short-lived; they persist into individuals' mid-thirties. The second chapter examines heterogeneity in returns to vocational education and finds a distinct divergence in labor market outcomes across genders, with males from relatively lower socioeconomic backgrounds experiencing higher returns from vocational classes. The third chapter uses difference-in-differences to study the causal effect of unilateral divorce laws on women's labor force participation rates. Overall, there is no suggestive evidence for the effect of unilateral divorce laws, but examination of the heterogeneous effects shows that unmarried women in the middle cohorts are significantly more likely to participate in the labor force.
Recommended Citation
Hu, Yue, "Essays on Education and Family Economics" (2024). All Dissertations. 3739.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/3739