GENDER AND RACE
IN THE LABOR MARKET
GENDER AND RACE IN THE LABOR MARKET
Sponsored by a Grant TÁMOP-4.1.2-08/2/A/KMR-2009-0041 Course Material Developed by Department of Economics,
Faculty of Social Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest (ELTE) Department of Economics, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest
Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Balassi Kiadó, Budapest
GENDER AND RACE
IN THE LABOR MARKET
Author: Anna Lovász
Supervised by Anna Lovász June 2011
ELTE Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics
GENDER AND RACE
IN THE LABOR MARKET
Week 11
Roma in the labor market II: schooling
Anna Lovász
Literature for next week:
employment policy
• Fleck–Messing (2009)
• Ringold et al. (2005)
Labor market situation of the Roma
• Last lecture (Kertesi–Kézdi 2010):
significant labor market disadvantage of the Roma
• Employment: decline after the transition, 40 percentage point disadvantage
• Wages: roughly 30 percentage point gap ( as a comparison: female-male gap is about 17)
• Reasons for the differences
• Role of low schooling, family background
• The social benefit of Roma integration
• Abilities: differences in test scores, causes
• School segregation
Kertesi–Kézdi 2010: Children of uneducated parents and Roma youth in secondary schools
• Employment rates of 18–35 year olds who are no longer enrolled in school, 2006–2009, percentages
• Compared to the EU average, the majority of the disadvantage in employment is seen
among the unskilled.
• Without secondary schooling, permanent
unemployment is the norm.
Roma and secondary school graduation
• Secondary schooling is critical for employment and life paths, its type is critical for income possibilities.
• Roma and disadvantaged people rarely receive higher education than vocational schooling, often not even that.
• Main cause: dropouts
• Goal: more precise evaluation of secondary school failures
• Data: Life path survey, panel data
• 10,000, students finishing 8th grade in 2006
• 1st wave: family structure, financial background, childhood, health, schooling history, plans for further education
• Further waves (2007–2009): schooling outcomes
Schooling outcomes by group
• 7-8% of Roma do not continue studies after the 8th grade,
<1% of non-Roma students.
• For low-skilled parents: 10 and 2-3%
• In the fourth year of secondary school, 62% of Roma students, and 95% of non-Roma students continue their studies.
• 40% of Roma students are in secondary schooling and have not been kept back a year, 80% of non-Roma.
• For low-skilled parents: 30 and 60%
Role of basic skills – Roma and non-Roma
• Stronger correlation between low competence and continuing education for Roma students
• They go to lower level schools even if they
have better skills, very rarely continue to high
schools.
Summary: Roma and secondary schooling
• The rate of dropping out is especially high among
Roma students, even compared to other students with similarly low-skilled family backgrounds.
• The relative disadvantage of the Roma population in terms of schooling is being reproduced after the
transition.
• Secondary school failures are correlated with the
serious omissions in terms of basic skills in elementary schools.
• Elementary schools fail to endow 20-25% of students with the basic skills necessary for secondary schooling.
Kertesi–Kézdi (2010): The Roma/non- Roma Test Score Gap in Hungary
• Test scores of Roma and non-Roma
students are different on average: what are the causes of this difference?
• Similar to black/white results in the USA
• There: increases with age, with controls, reduces to about 0.
• Explanatory variables of the decomposition:
health status, home environment, school fixed effects, schooling of parents, and income status
• Comparison to the black/white results
Statistics on the situation of the Roma and
blacks in the USA
Differences in test scores
Control variables
• Health status
• Low birth weight
• Teenage height
• Self-evaluation
• Home environment
• Retrospective questions: how often they read stories, went to the theatre or hiking
• Standardized HOME measures
• School fixed effects (+class level)
• Family background (living with parents, number of books, internet), parents’ schooling
• Permanent income effects: employment of parents, number of years of employment, household income, size, poverty measures
Results: Roma non-Roma test score differential
Differences in health status/home environment
• Raw differences are significant.
• With controls they are much smaller.
Not innate differences, consequences of poverty and low schooling
Kertesi–Kézdi (2006):budgetary benefits of helping
disadvantaged and Roma reach secondary school graduation
• Estimation of the benefit from an investment in the education of Roma children
– Highly educated people contribute more to the budget and receive less in transfers.
– The estimated discounted long-term gain is about 19 million Forints, 7-9 million by the most conservative estimates.
Kertesi–Kézdi (2009): Segregation in primary schools in Hungary
• Detailed analysis of between- and within- school segregation
• Regional differences
• Comparison to the USA
• National Assessment of Basic Competences 2006
• All students nationally
• On average can give us trustworthy
estimates
Measuring segregation
• Exposure index for majority (T) and minority (K):
• Where
• Segregation index:
• Does not depend on the ratio of minority students regional comparison
Results: national averages
Results by region and by settlement type
