Eight papers, both theoretical and applied, on the concept of equality of opportunity which says that a society should guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of effort.

This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating pyschological factors as an explanation of the gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead to gender wage gaps.

"Overeducation is one of the most important mechanisms for labor market adjustment when there is an excess supply of high-skilled workers. However, there is much debate about the consequences of this phenomena and the short and long term effects for both the overeducated worker and the economy as a whole. This book contributes to our understanding of recent developments in the research on overeducation by providing a detailed overview of the pertinent theoretical and policy issues."

Dr Hakim tests the power of patriarchy theory against economic and psychophysiology theories. Sex discrimination, part-time work, flexible hours, homeworking, marriage and career patterns, labour mobility, labour turnover and the impact of the European Union are all considered. Analysis of the grand sweep of history over the last century, based on large national surveys, is complemented by case studies of people working in occupations undergoing change and their resistance to it. Throughout the book comparisons are drawn between Britain, the USA, and other European countries and also China, Japan and other Far Eastern societies. The analysis draws on sociology, economics, psychology, labour law, history and anthropology to conclude that female heterogeneity is increasing, explaining the growing polarisation of women's employment and many contradictory research results