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We leverage data on 1,857 families in 140 rural cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire to report on child work activities and schooling decisions. We distinguish between unpaid domestic labor and unpaid agricultural child labor activities reported by children in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that more than 80% of children participate in at least one household work activity and more than 50% in at least one agricultural work activity, with differences between boys and girls. Older boys performed more unpaid agricultural work activities, and girls performed more domestic work activities. Thirty-five percent of children were engaged in unpaid agricultural child labor, a rate similar to a national estimate of child labor in cocoa-growing communities of Côte d'Ivoire in 2018/19. Agricultural child labor and schooling are predicted by a child's age and gender, household factors such as parental age, family size, multidimensional poverty, and community factors, especially community-level child labor rates. Social protection and education programs targeting older boys could improve their schooling outcomes and reduce agricultural child labor. Likewise, addressing acute poverty with multifaceted programs reducing consumption-based poverty, poor parental education, and improving community infrastructures could reduce child labor.

This research paper is the fifth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on comparative analysis of labour force survey data from 2014, the report analyses the vocational effect on labour market and education outcomes, asking whether any advantages conferred by vocational qualifications in early career would be offset by disadvantages later in life. The report explores the functioning of the safety net and the diversion effects across countries, demonstrating how these vary considerably with the specific institutional structure of schooling and work-based training. The results indicate that VET graduates are potentially sacrificing the longer-term gains associated with further education in favour of short-term benefits. [This research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH and including the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

This paper demonstrates multiple beneficial impacts of a program promoting intergenerational mobility for disadvantaged African-American children and their children. The program improves outcomes of the first-generation treatment group across the life cycle, which translates into better family environments for the second generation leading to positive intergenerational gains. There are long-lasting beneficial program effects on cognition through age 54, contradicting claims of fadeout that have dominated popular discussions of early childhood programs. Children of the first-generation treatment group have higher levels of education and employment, lower levels of criminal activity, and better health than children of the first-generation control group.

Unprecedented attention has gone to researching young voters, and yet one segment of this age group has been largely ignored: non-college (or "working") youth. Because very little is known about them, the following paper advances three fundamental concerns: What types of political activities do young workers engage in? What can be learned about them by comparing their political attitudes and behaviors to their college attending peers? and, What are some strategies that might be effective to increase their political participation? In responding to these questions, the current article reports data from a telephone survey of over 1,000 19-23 year-old working and college youth. The findings confirm that young workers (1) report lower levels of political socialization and interest as well as fewer civic skills, group memberships and mobilization opportunities than college students, and (2) are less likely to engage in a set of political acts than their college attending peers. The data also reveal, however, heretofore unknown patterns for this group, including that: political socialization and political interest are the most powerful predictors of participation for young workers; the cultivation of civic skills is a stronger predictor of participation for young workers than for college students; and workers who belong to groups and express an interest in politics may be the most ripe for mobilization efforts. The conclusion addresses how these findings could be used in efforts to engage young workers in the political system. (Contains 4 tables and 9 endnotes.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).]

The Decennial Census is the most important data collection activity undertaken by the U.S. federal statistical system. Because census data are used to apportion Congress and draw redistricting lines for thousands of state and local single-member districts to meet the one-person/one-vote guidelines, the census is at the heart of the political system. Also, census data are used to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds each year, and they are widely used by other government statistical agencies to calculate rates or design surveys. Children are the age group most often missed in the Decennial Census--the reasons range from their living in hard-to-count neighborhoods to the fact that the census form only has space for complete demographic information on six household members. The fact that children are the age group missed most often in the Decennial Census comes as a surprise to many people, even those who have closely followed census issues. Despite the long-standing problem of children being missed in the Decennial Census, little has been done to examine this issue. Missed children might be referred to as the "overlooked undercount" because the undercount of children has been a persistent problem that has been given relatively little attention over time. The high undercount of children challenges the image that the undercount is made up mostly of young adults and people who dodge the census-takers for nefarious reasons. Unlike adults, who may bear some responsibility for making sure they are counted in the census, children are dependent on others to make sure they are included. Yet in 1980, 1990, and 2000, Census Bureau data show children, particularly young children, are one of the groups most likely to be missed in the census. This publication provides some background and information on the undercount of children, describes some theories about why children are missed in the census, and outlines a few ideas for reaching the parents of young children with a message about the importance of being counted in the census. (Contains 2 figures, 1 box, 10 tables and 37 endnotes.)

Demographic factors that will determine enrollment potential and service needs for California's segments of postsecondary education over the next 15 years are examined. Attention is directed to total population, age distribution, race composition, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic status. To provide some indication of changes that might occur in postsecondary education, information is provided on shifts in the composition and the progression of grade cohorts through the school system from kindergarten to high school graduation. Recent trends in college and university enrollments in the United States and California are reviewed to identify dimensions of participation that will most strongly affect future enrollment potential. Included are differences in participation for California's counties and eight metropolitan regions. Differences in participation for the University of California, California State University, and the community colleges are also identified with a focus on ethnic composition, age distribution, family income, and parental educational attainment. The California Postsecondary Education Commission's computer-based model for simulating the effects on enrollment potential of various potential changes in demographics is also described. (SW)

Today's young adults want and need a diverse array of education options, including, but not limited to, two- and four-year degrees to help them connect learning with earning. Young people and employers alike are eager for effective, efficient, work-aligned pathways to employment that enable people not just to say, "I know a lot, and here's the paper to prove it," but instead, "Let me show you what I can do with what I know." We surveyed over a thousand young adults who are not pursuing a four-year degree. Around half of our survey respondents have chosen to pursue nondegree, education-to-career pathways such as apprenticeship, certification, and licensure. The other half of our respondents have chosen not to pursue any postsecondary education. Our goal is to better understand the motivations, circumstances, influencers, priorities, and satisfaction level of today's "non-college youth" to ensure that emerging generations of students have access to accurate information about the many viable pathways that exist and how they might pursue them. [This report was collaborated with American Student Assistance.]

We exploit a natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of parental education on educational outcomes of their children when they are high school seniors. In 1968, the Taiwanese government extended compulsory education from 6 to 9 years and opened over 150 new junior high schools at a differential rate among regions. We form treatment and control groups of women or men who were age 12 or under on the one hand and between the ages of 13 and 25 on the other hand in 1968. Within each region, we exploit variations across cohorts in new junior high school openings to construct an instrument for schooling. We employ this instrument to estimate the causal effects of mother's and father's schooling on their child's college entrance examination test scores in the years 2000-2003, on the probability that the child attended college and on the rank of the college attended. The schooling of each parent does cause their child to experience better educational outcomes. A one-year increase in the schooling of either parent raises the probability that the child attends one of the top six colleges in Taiwan by approximately 10 percent.

Our panel data set on educational attainment has been updated for 146 countries from 1950 to 2010. The data are disaggregated by sex and by 5-year age intervals. We have improved the accuracy of estimation by using information from consistent census data, disaggregated by age group, along with new estimates of mortality rates and completion rates by age and education level. We use these new data to investigate how output relates to the stock of human capital, measured by overall years of schooling as well as by the composition of educational attainment of workers at various levels of education. We find schooling has a significantly positive effect on output. After controlling for the simultaneous determination of human capital and output, by using the 10-year lag of parents' education as an instrument variable (IV) for the current level of education, the estimated rate-of-return to an additional year of schooling ranges from 5% to 12%, close to typical Mincerian return estimates found in the labor literature.

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average scores on international tests, as are larger enrollment rates for the relevant age group. However, accounting for sample selectivity does not alter existing research findings that tested academic achievement can account for a majority of international differences in economic growth and that institutional features of school systems have important effects on international differences in student achievement.