There is an ongoing debate about the economic effects of individualism. We establish that individualism leads to better educational and labor market outcomes. Using data from the largest international adult skill assessment, we identify the effects of individualism by exploiting variation between migrants at the origin country, origin language, and person level. Migrants from more individualistic cultures have higher cognitive skills and larger skill gains over time. They also invest more in their skills over the life-cycle, as they acquire more years of schooling and are more likely to participate in adult education activities. In fact, individualism is more important in explaining adult skill formation than any other cultural trait that has been emphasized in previous literature. In the labor market, more individualistic migrants earn higher wages and are less often unemployed. We show that our results cannot be explained by selective migration or omitted origin-country variables.

Die Entscheidung für eine Ausbildung oder ein Studium im Bereich Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) hängt nicht nur von absoluten Leistungen in Mathematik ab, sondern davon, wie gut Mathematik relativ zu anderen Fächern – etwa Sprache – gelingt. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die intergenerationale Übertragung solcher relativen Stärken in Mathematik und Sprache auf Basis niederländischer Testdaten von Eltern und ihren Kindern. Wir zeigen, dass Eltern, die im Verhältnis zu Sprache besonders gut in Mathematik abschneiden, mit deutlich höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit Kinder haben, die ebenfalls relativ besser in Mathematik sind. Zudem belegen wir, dass diese Übertragung relativer Stärken nicht ausschließlich genetisch oder familiär geprägt ist, sondern durch Schule und Lernumfeld – und damit durch Bildungspolitik – beeinflusst werden kann.

Die grüne Transformation, verstanden als ein Prozess, Energie zunehmend treibhausgasneutral zu erzeugen, kann mit marktwirtschaftlichen Instrumenten und dafür erforderlichen Rahmenbedingungen kostengünstiger umgesetzt werden als mit staatlicher Steuerung des Energieverbrauchs und der Energieerzeugung. Kosteneffizienz ist von entscheidender Bedeutung für die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit der Bevölkerung, die Lasten der Transformation zu tragen, und für eine gerechte Verteilung der Lasten.

Die grüne Transformation, verstanden als ein Prozess, Energie zunehmend treibhausgasneutral zu erzeugen, kann mit marktwirtschaftlichen Instrumenten und dafür erforderlichen Rahmenbedingungen kostengünstiger umgesetzt werden als mit staatlicher Steuerung des Energieverbrauchs und der Energieerzeugung. Kosteneffizienz ist von entscheidender Bedeutung für die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit der Bevölkerung, die Lasten der Transformation zu tragen, und für eine gerechte Verteilung der Lasten.

We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation. For low-SES adolescents, the mentoring increases a combined index of the outcomes by over half a standard deviation after one year, with significant increases in each dimension. Part of the treatment effect is mediated by establishing mentors as attachment figures who provide guidance for the future. Effects on grades and labor-market orientation, but not on patience/social skills, persist three years after program start. By that time, the mentoring also improves early realizations of school-to-work transitions for low-SES adolescents. The mentoring is not effective for higher-SES adolescents. The results show that substituting lacking family support by other adults can help disadvantaged children at adolescent age.

We conduct a discrete choice experiment to investigate how the location of a firm in a rural or urban region affects the perceived job attractiveness for university students and graduates and, therewith, contributes to the rural–urban divide. We characterize the attractiveness of a location based on several dimensions (social life, public infrastructure and connectivity) and vary job design and contractual characteristics of the job. We find that job offers from companies in rural areas are generally considered less attractive, regardless of the attractiveness of the region. The negative perception is particularly pronounced among persons of urban origin and singles. In contrast, for individuals with partners and kids this preference is less pronounced. High-skilled individuals who originate from rural areas have no specific regional preference at all.

This article evaluates the effectiveness of one of the largest mentoring programs for disadvantaged adolescents in Germany. The aim of the program “Rock Your Life!” is the successful transition of adolescents from lower secondary school to an apprenticeship or upper secondary school. Mentoring programs can strongly improve the transition from school to work for disadvantaged adolescents. The results show that substituting a lack of family support with other adults can help disadvantaged children in adolescence.

In this report, we discuss the results of our randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a nationwide mentoring program designed to improve the labor-market prospects of disadvantaged adolescents in Germany (Resnjanskij et al., 2023). The study is motivated by the high persistence of inequality across generations present even in countries with comprehensive social welfare systems (Alvaredo et al., 2018). In particular, the school-to-work transition is a decisive moment that determines the differences in later labor-market outcomes of young adolescents.