This paper estimates the effects of accumulated bachelor-level student debt on post-graduation labour-market outcomes under Australia’s universal income-contingent loan system. Although income-contingent repayment provides insurance against low earnings, outstanding debt effectively operates as an additional marginal tax on income until fully repaid, potentially influencing labour-market behaviour. Using rich administrative data and exogenous variation in tuition fees generated by federal reforms and field-specific fee schedules, we examine impacts over the early and mid-career. Higher accumulated debt reduces earnings, slows income growth, and worsens job-quality outcomes, with effects strongest early in the career and fading as debt is repaid. Impacts vary by gender, repayment status, and field of study, indicating that student debt can exacerbate existing labour-market inequalities even within an income-contingent framework. Mechanism analysis shows that effects operate primarily through earnings capacity and job quality rather than employment participation. These findings inform the efficiency and equity evaluation of higher-education finance policy.

A large literature shows that being relatively old within a school entry cohort confers substantial advantages in cognitive outcomes, but less is known about whether these effects persist into adulthood. We study the impact of school start age on short-run cognitive outcomes and longer-run labour market outcomes in British Columbia, Canada, where children born in the same calendar year enter school together. Using linked administrative data, we follow multiple cohorts from elementary school into early adulthood. We find large advantages for the oldest students in standardized test scores that persist through high school. Older students are also more likely to attend university, though completion effects are smaller. In contrast, effects on wages and social assistance receipt are modest, and economically small. The findings suggest that large early cognitive differences attenuate substantially in adulthood, raising questions about the mechanisms driving this convergence.

Austria combines exceptionally low educational mobility with remarkably high income mobility\,--\,a striking ``mobility paradox.'' Using population-wide administrative data, we document this paradox and show that it arises from the structure of Austria’s vocational and tertiary education system. Large within-track heterogeneity in both vocational (VET) and tertiary returns leads to substantial overlap in their lifetime earnings distributions. The widespread and accessible VET pathway provides clear routes into stable, well-paid occupations, enabling high income mobility even for children from less-educated households. The results imply that the link between education and income mobility is not mechanical, and that expanding tertiary enrollment alone may do little to enhance economic opportunity.

This paper provides an evaluation of Oma Linja, a school intervention that supported students in the final year of compulsory education in making the educational choice that is most suitable for them. About 10,000 9th-grade students in Finland participated in a randomized controlled trial. The treatment included a training in group counseling techniques to school educators, and motivational workshops for students. Our primary results indicate that, for the average student, Oma Linja did not significantly change the likelihood of graduating from upper secondary education or enrolling in tertiary education. However, it increased graduation from the vocational track by 2 p.p., with a symmetrical decrease in the academic track. These effects were concentrated in students with GPA below 8.5. Additionally, students with an immigrant background were 4.1 percentage points (7%) more likely to graduate from upper secondary school, closing the graduation gap by 25%.