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Extant research on the gender pay gap suggests that men and women who do the same work for the same employer receive similar pay, so that processes sorting people into jobs are thought to account for the vast majority of the pay gap. Data that can identify women and men who do the same work for the same employer are rare, and research informing this crucial aspect of gender differences in pay is several decades old and from a limited number of countries. Here, using recent linked employer-employee data from 15 countries, we show that the processes sorting people into different jobs account for substantially less of the gender pay differences than was previously believed and that within-job pay differences remain consequential.

A growing number of schools are adopting restorative justice (RJ) practices that de-emphasize exclusionary discipline and aim for racial equity. We examine student discipline as RJ programs matured in Meadowview Public Schools from 2008 to 2017. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that students in RJ schools experienced a profound decline in their suspension rates during the first 5 years of implementation. However, the benefits of RJ were not shared by all students, as disciplinary outcomes for Black students were largely unchanged. While the overall effects of RJ in this context are promising, racial disproportionality widened. Our results suggest that the racial equity intentions of RJ may be diluted as schools integrate RJ into their existing practices.

Despite interest in the contributions of school discipline to the creation of racial inequality, previous research has been unable to identify how students who receive suspensions in school differ from unsuspended classmates on key young adult outcomes. We utilize novel data to document the links between high school discipline and important young adult outcomes related to criminal justice contact, social safety net program participation, postsecondary education, and the labor market. We show that the link between school discipline and young adult outcomes tends to be stronger for Black students than for White students, and that approximately 30% of the Black-White disparities in young adult criminal justice outcomes, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) receipt, and college completion can be traced back to inequalities in exposure to school discipline.

Prizes--formal systems that publicly allocate rewards for exemplary behavior--play an increasingly important role in a wide array of social settings, including education. In this paper, we evaluate a prize system designed to boost achievement at two high schools by assigning students color-coded ID cards based on a previously low-stakes test. Average student achievement on this test increased in the ID card schools beyond what one would expect from contemporaneous changes in neighboring schools. However, regression discontinuity analyses indicate that the program created new inequalities between students who received low-status and high-status ID cards. These findings indicate that status-based incentives create categorical inequalities between prize winners and others even as they reorient behavior toward the goals they reward.

Research on the labor market returns to education focus on explanations based on human capital, signaling, and closure. Drawing on the case of Slovenia from 1993 through 2007 – as it transitioned from a planned to a market-based economy – we propose an alternative institutionally coordinated perspective. We delineate the key features of this arrangement, which include: (1) strong educational criteria for occupations; (2) pre-set job-level pay; (3) within-job educational premia (pay sub-classes) in some sectors; and (4) a portion of pay that is performance-based. This institutionally coordinated perspective helps us understand both the role education plays in matching Slovenians to jobs, and how education contributes to differential pay between individuals in the same job. We use matched employer-employee data on all Slovenians to examine the degree to which the returns to education result from sorting into different establishments, occupations, and occupation-establishment units. We find that sorting processes account for the majority of the returns to education under this institutionally coordinated arrangement. Further, the degree to which sorting matters varies by education type, with the returns to vocational education being somewhat less driven by sorting processes.

Students in the United States whose household income is less than 130% of the poverty line qualify for free lunch, and students whose household income is between 130% and 185% of the poverty line qualify for reduced-price lunch. Education researchers and policymakers often use free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) status to measure socioeconomic disadvantage. But how valid is this measure? Linking IRS income tax data to school administrative records for all eighth graders in one California public school district and Oregon public schools, we examine how well FRPL enrollment captures student disadvantage. We find that FRPL categories capture relatively little variation in household income. However, FRPL captures elements of educational disadvantage that IRS-reported household income data do not.

This study provides an international perspective on mathematics by examnnng mathematics self-concept, achievement, and the desire to enter a career involving mathematics among eighth graders in 49 countries. Using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, this study shows that self-concept in mathematics is more closely related to the desire to enter a career using mathematics than achievement is. Further, while gender differences in mathematics self-concept are smaller in more egalitarian countries, both girls and boys have lower mathematics self-concepts and less interest in mathematics careers in these countries. These findings reveal a policy paradox: policies aimed at training the next generation of STEM professionals often highlight the need to close the gender gap, but countries with smaller gender gaps have fewer boys and girls interested in mathematics-intensive careers. We conclude by highlighting the importance of disentangling instrumental and expressive aspects of gender inequality in STEM fields.

Prizes - formal systems that publicly allocate rewards for exemplary behavior - play an increasingly important role in a wide array of social settings, including education. In this paper, we evaluate a prize system designed to boost achievement at two high schools by assigning students color-coded ID cards based on a previously low stakes test. Average student achievement on this test increased in the ID card schools beyond what one would expect from contemporaneous changes in neighboring schools. However, regression discontinuity analyses indicate that the program created new inequalities between students who received low-status and high-status ID cards. These findings indicate that status-based incentives create categorical inequalities between prize winners and others even as they reorient behavior toward the goals they reward.

Current educational policies in the United States attempt to boost student achievement and promote equality by intensifying the curriculum and exposing students to more advanced coursework. This paper investigates the relationship between one such effort - California's push to enroll all 8th grade students in Algebra - and the distribution of student achievement. We suggest that this effort is an instance of a "collective effects" problem, where the population-level effects of a policy are different from its effects at the individual level. In such contexts, we argue that it is important to consider broader population effects as well as the difference between "treated" and "untreated" individuals. To do so, we present differences in inverse propensity score weighted distributions investigating how this curricular policy changed the distribution of student achievement. We find that California's attempt to intensify the curriculum did not raise test scores at the bottom of the distribution, but did lower scores at the top of the distribution. These results highlight the efficacy of inverse propensity score weighting approaches for examining distributional differences, and provide a cautionary tale for curricular intensification efforts and other policies with collective effects.