Education, labor markets, and natural disasters

This thesis explores the entire cycle of education, from initial access to schooling, over degree completion, to returns to education. Despite recent gains in increasing access, an tens of millions of children worldwide are still out of school. Abolishing school fees has increased enrollment rates in several countries where enrollments were low and fees were high. However, such policies may be less effective, or even have negative consequences, when supply-side responses are weak. The first part of the thesis evaluates the impacts of a tuition waiver program in Haiti, which provided public financing to nonpublic schools conditional on not charging tuition. The chapter concludes that school's participation in the program results in more students enrolled, more staff, and slightly higher student-teacher ratios. The program also reduces grade repetition and the share of overage students. While the increase in students does not directly equate to a reduction in the number of children out of school, it does demonstrate strong demand from families for the program and a correspondingly strong supply response from the nonpublic sector.Pertaining degree completion, it is well established that natural disasters can have a negative effect on human capital accumulation. However, a comparison of the differential impacts of distinct disaster classes is missing. Using census data and information from DesInventar and EMDAT, two large disaster databases, the second part of the thesis assesses how geological disasters and climatic shocks affect the upper secondary degree attainment of adolescents. The chapter focuses on Mexico, given its diverse disaster landscape and lack of obligatory upper secondary education over the observed time period. While all disaster types are found to impede attainment, climatic disasters that are not infrastructure-destructive (e.g. droughts) have the strongest negative effect, decreasing educational expansion by over 40%. The effects seem largely driven by demand-side changes such as increases in school dropouts and fertility, especially for young women. The results may also be influenced by deteriorated parental labor market outcomes. Supply-side effects appear to be solely driven by infrastructure-destructive climatic shocks (e.g. floods). These findings thus call for differential public measures according to specific disaster types and an enhanced attention to climatic events given their potentially stronger impact on younger generations.It is also widely appreciated that natural disasters can have negative impacts on local labor market outcomes. However, the study of differential types of negative capital shocks, the underlying labor market mechanisms, and the context of the poorest countries have been neglected. Following testable predictions of economic theory, the third part of the thesis exploits the exogenous variation of destruction of human and physical capital caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake to disentangle the differential impact on local individual monetary returns to education. Employing individual-level survey data from before and after the earthquake the chapter finds that the returns decreased on average by 37%, especially in equipment-capital intensive industry. Higher educated individuals adjust into low-paying self-employment or agriculture. The returns are particularly shock-sensitive for urban residents, migrants, males, and people over age 25.