Long-term changes in rates of return to education, occupational attainment, and married female labor force participation: A case study of Taiwan (1976-1990)

Educational expansion experienced in many countries has an impact on returns to education, individual occupational attainment, and female labor force participation. Previous studies rarely observed long-term impacts. This study, using data across many years, explores (1) changes in rates of return to education over time, (2) occupational filtering-down over time, and (3) the determinants of labor force participation for married women.; A 15-year (1976-1990) cross-sectional data set, with consistent sampling and methodology, from a Newly Industrialized Country--Taiwan--is used. The unit of analysis is individuals earning compensation for the inquiries into rates of return and occupational attainment, while it is households in the study of married female labor force participation. Three methods: a traditional elaborate method, Mincer's earnings function, and Murphy-Welch's revised earnings function, are used to estimate the rates of return to education. Logistic regression is used to examine the degree of occupational filtering-down and the determinants of female labor participation.; The results are: (1) stable rates of return to education accompany rising years of schooling; (2) the most profitable level of schooling shifts from secondary to four-year college education; (3) investment in female and rural education is socially equalizing and economically profitable; (4) over time college graduates are less able to secure professional jobs and gradually replace high-school graduates as the major source of clerical workers; (5) holding other variables constant, chance of employment in skilled occupations rises regardless of educational level, but probability of entering unskilled ones declines; (6) married women with college degrees are most likely to work, next most likely workers are those with no formal schooling or high-school education, while those with primary or junior-high education are the least likely to work; (7) a husband's income has an inhibiting effect on his wife's employment status, and this effect levels off at higher levels of husbands' income; (8) the probability of a wife's employment rises with age and peaks at age 40-45, but declines after age 45; (9) in the 1970s, the more children a woman had, the more likely she was to work, while in the 1980s married women with none or many children were more likely to work than those with 1-5 children.