Essays on the measurement and analysis of educational and skill inequalities

After introducing the different data sources used in this dissertation in Chapter 2, I evaluate the linkage of the ALWA survey data with the administrative data of the IAB. I examine both consent bias and selectivity in linkage success based on survey and paradata. My results are informative for potential data users, for survey practice as well as for practitioners of record linkage. My main findings are the following: contrary to previous results, linkage consent in ALWA is not significantly related to the respondents' reported educational or income levels. Consent bias is mainly driven by the labour market status of the respondent. The highest consent rates are achieved by older, female and more experienced interviewers. Probabilistic record linkage substantially increases the number of observations without introducing additional selectivity to the linked sample compared to the result of deterministic matching. Manual matching further increases the number of observation at the cost of more pronounced selectivity of the resulting sample. Selectivity of the successfully linked data is mainly driven by the age, the immigrant background and the employment status of the respondents. In Chapter 3, I examine whether people from low-qualified family backgrounds make up for any inherited lack of formal education by means of non-formal training. Hypotheses based on economic theory and findings from various other disciplines suggest otherwise. I use the ALWA survey data to estimate the influence of family background on non-formal training participation. Count data analyses show that a low-qualified family background is negatively related to both likelihood and frequency of on-the-job training. This result holds when controlling for education, ability and personality as well as job and firm characteristics. Chapter 4, which is mainly based on a collaborative paper with one coauthor, asks whether there is a reward for basic skills in the German labour market. To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as administrative earnings data. Our results indicate that earnings are positively related to both types of skills. Furthermore, there is no evidence for non-linearity in this relationship and only little heterogeneity when differentiating by sub-groups.