Suchergebnisse

Student mobility is the most recognised element of Erasmus+, a major EU policy which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2017. It is clearly popular with an increase in student uptake from 3.2 to 272.5 thousands from 1987 to 2014. Recent studies show that studying abroad provides benefits like improved employment chances and language competences. These benefits are not equally distributed among graduates, since recent literature shows that disadvantaged students are less likely to study abroad than better off students. This is explained by differing social capital of individuals from diverse socio-economic backgrounds which impacts on different choices. However, not much is known about the role of social segregation in universities and subjects studied. Using multilevel logistic regressions this paper examines two main research questions. First, how important is social segregation in universities and subjects for unequal mobility uptake? Second, how much of existing differences in mobility by socio-economic background can be explained by ability of students? Throughout, results for Erasmus mobility will be compared with those of other mobility schemes organised by higher education institutes. The study exploits population data of more than 500,000 UK graduates of the 2010/11, 2012/13 and 2014/15 cohorts deriving from the Higher Education Statistics Agency data (HESA). Results show that a considerable part of unequal mobility uptake is explained by social segregation in universities and subjects even if graduates' upper secondary school grades are taken into account. Policy makers aiming to increase mobility uptake of disadvantaged students could allocate resources for mobility more equally across universities.

Literature examining immigrants' educational disadvantage across countries focuses generally on average differences in educational outcomes between immigrants and natives disguising thereby that immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group. The aim of this paper is to examine educational inequalities among immigrants in eight high immigration countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA. Results indicate that for almost all countries immigrants' educational dispersion is considerably higher than for natives. For most countries higher educational dispersion derives from very low achieving immigrants. Quantile regression results reveal that at lower percentiles language skills impact more on educational achievement than at the top of the achievement distribution. Results are presented separately for immigrants of different age cohorts, varying time of immigrants' residence in the host country and subject examined (maths and reading) highlighting thereby the different patterns found by immigrant group and achievement measure. -- Education ; educational inequalities ; immigration ; PISA ; TIMSS ; PIRLS

The literature suggests that the transition process from centrally planned to market economies in Central and Eastern Europe increased the gender gap in poverty. Evidence for women's higher poverty risk is scarce, given that most analyses use household-level data and assume equal sharing of income within households, an assumption that has been questioned in recent literature. This article uses individual data on subjective well-being to examine the extent of gender differences in welfare in transition countries. OECD countries serve for benchmarking results. Findings show that the gender gap in subjective well-being is more predominant in post-communist than in OECD countries. Relatively little of the gender gap can be attributed to gender differences in socio-economic position in transition countries, but certain attributes, such as higher education and unemployment, impact differently on reported well-being for women and men.

The analysis of economic factors usually applied for examining gender inequality in the labour market suggests that former post communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have reached similarly high standards of gender equality compared to Western European countries. This paper aims at comparing attitudes to women's work between transition and OECD countries highlighting the explanatory power of societal norms. The analysis of attitudes, their determinants and their change in regions and countries is based on mainly two waves (1994 and 1998) of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). These data reveal that a strikingly higher share of people in the East than in the West agrees with traditional values on women's work. The large homogeneity in patriarchal values of Eastern European people with differing socio-economic background explains these regional differences. The East-West gap in traditional value orientations is likely to widen given that liberal values spread faster in OECD than in transition countries.

Data on educational access show gender parity of pupils attending primary and secondary schools in transition countries. The first aim of this analysis is to examine whether the gender balance in educational access translates also into gender equality in educational achievement. There are several and very recent international surveys available measuring pupils learning achievement and functional literacy in schools. These surveys are typically analysed in isolation from each other even though they are very different in their design. The second aim of this paper is to evaluate whether we find a robust pattern on gender equality in achievement across different sources: the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Programme of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Besides a comparison of gender differences in mean achievement for transition and OECD countries we discuss alternatives for translating achievement scores into something easily understood. In addition, differences in boys' and girls' achievement distributions and determinants of gender inequality will be examined.

International student mobility is the most recognised element of Erasmus+, a major EU policy. Not enough is known about the causal effect of studying abroad on labour market outcomes. This is because most of the existing studies dismiss selection bias: the different composition of students opting and not opting for studying abroad. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following three questions, whilst accounting for the selection bias into mobility. First, does international student mobility (ISM) have a positive effect on labour market outcomes? Second, do the returns to ISM vary between two countries with contrasting labour market and education systems? Third, do the returns to ISM differ according to the socio-economic background of the students? Results are compared between Italy and the UK using Italian Institute of National Statistics and UK Higher Education Statistics Agency graduate survey data. Using propensity score matching, the returns to study-related stays abroad are estimated on a set of labour market outcomes around six to twelve months and three years after graduation for undergraduates (UK and Italy) and postgraduates (Italy only). Results confirm that mobility is positively associated with the outcome variables under scrutiny. Mobile graduates benefit from slightly greater employment chances than nonmobile graduates. Returns to ISM tend to be higher among graduates in Italy. The most sizable effect is found for mobiles' higher propensity to enroll in further studies. The latter is more likely for the socially disadvantaged graduates, which might contribute to reducing income inequality in the long term.

The predominant part of the literature states that women are more likely to donate to charitable causes but men are more generous in terms of the amount given. The last result generally derives from the focus on mean amount given. This paper examines gender differences in giving focusing on the distribution of amounts donated and the probability of giving using UK micro-data on individual giving to charitable causes. Results indicate that most women are more generous than men also in terms of the amounts donated. Quantile regression analysis shows that this pattern is robust if we take into account gender differences in individual characteristics such as household structure, education and income. The analysis also examines differences in gender preferences for varying charitable causes. For most of the paper, separate analyses are presented for single and married/cohabiting people, highlighting the very different gender patterns of giving behaviour found in the two groups. -- Charitable donations ; gender differences

Income is an important correlate for numerous phenomena in the social sciences. But many surveys collect data with just a single question covering all forms of income. This raises issues of quality, and these are heightened when individuals are asked about the household total rather than own income alone. Data are typically banded, implying a loss of information. We investigate the reliability of 'single-question' data using the ONS Omnibus and British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys as examples. We first compare the distributions of income in these surveys - individual income in the Omnibus and household income in the BSA - with those in two other much larger UK surveys that measure income in much greater detail. Second, we investigate an implication of restricting the single question to individual income and interviewing only one adult per household: total income in respondents' households is unobserved. We therefore examine the relationship between individual and household income in one of the comparator surveys. Third, after imposing bands on comparator survey data, we measure the information loss from banding with Generalised Entropy indices. We then assess its impact on the use of income as a covariate. Disaggregation by gender proves fruitful in much of the analysis. -- Income data ; banding ; information loss ; Omnibus survey ; British Social Attitudes survey

Individuals' donations to overseas charities are an important source of funding for development assistance from rich industrialised countries. But little is known about the nature of these charitable donations. The literature on giving focuses on total donations to all causes and does not identify separately the pattern or the determinants of giving to any particular cause. We investigate giving to overseas causes using UK survey microdata that record individuals' donations to different types of charity. We establish a picture of overseas giving, comparing this with giving to other causes. Socio-economic correlates of both types of giving are analysed, including gender, marital status, occupation, education and, especially, income. We also investigate the relationship between individuals' overseas giving and their attitudes towards poverty in developing countries. -- Charitable donations ; overseas development ; NGOs

Within-country differences in educational outcomes are compared for a large group of industrialised countries. We investigate where inequality is greatest, the association between inequality in learning and average levels of learning, the interpretation of measured levels of inequality, and differences in inequality at the top and bottom of the national distributions. Our analysis is based on test score data for 21 countries present in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). The use of three different surveys avoids reliance on a single source.