Essays in economics of education

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Alei Fernandes
• Orientador(a): Souza, André, Cavalcanti, Tiago
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Trabalho infantil; Distribuição de talentos; Ação afirmativa; Margens de ajustamento; Ensino superior brasileiro
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Child labor; Talent distribution; Affirmative action; Margins of adjustment; Brazilian higher education
• Link de acesso: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/35757

We will present two chapters in this thesis. The first concerns child labor and how it affects education and talent distribution, while the second estimates the effects of an affirmative action policy for higher education in Brazil. Child labor affects 160 million children aged 5 to 17, mostly in developing countries. Models end empirical work show that child labor is usually related to poverty and it impacts individual’s human capital accumulation and health. In this research we propose a overlapping generations model where heterogeneous agents live for two periods and make decisions on child labor, educational attainment and educational investment and then calibrate it using Brazilian data from 2010. We show that parental education impacts whether children provide child labor or not. We also show that, depending on parental education, children with similar innate ability end up with different levels of educational attainment, human capital and wages. Finally, we analyze how different policies impact the overall economy and talent distribution. Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented individuals who might have otherwise been overlooked due to systemic disadvantages, these programs may enable students to bridge the gap and catch up to their peers. In this study, we examine the effects of a quota-type affirmative action policy on gaps in college outcomes between potential beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Using comprehensive administrative data from a leading Brazilian university which implemented affirmative action in 2005, we find that compared to their non-quota peers, potential quota beneficiaries are less likely to progress smoothly through college and less likely to graduate, a result that is mostly driven by those who would not be admitted to the university otherwise. Notably, however, most of these differences shrink as the students progress through college, suggesting a catch-up effect between those groups. While potential quota students initially face challenges, resulting in a reduced course load in their early college years, they compensate by taking more credits in later years to ultimately graduate.