Essays in education and family economics

Abstract

This thesis consists of five essays and can be divided into two major parts. The first makes use of Swedish data registers to study the teacher labor market. The second brings the analysis to Poland and studies the effects of family size on parental labor supply as well as the effects of child gender on family outcomes. All of the essays are empirical, but the first two present descriptive evidence while the latter three attempt to gauge causal effects.

Essay I: studies the institutional aspects of labor market for teachers and how they correlate with teacher turnover.

Essay II: documents turnover among Swedish teachers of different quality, where skills are measured not only using standard input-based quality measures (education or experience), but also cognitive and noncognitive military assessments.

Essay III: investigates how student quality affects teacher mobility using exogenous variation in students' credentials.

Essay IV: examines the effects of child's gender on family consumption, stability, fertility and labor supply using data on Polish households.

Essay V: assesses the effects of family size on parental labor supply in a setting with low levels of female employment and a low fertility rate.

Keywords: teacher mobility, labor supply, gender preferences