abstract: 'Young people have to be provided with opportunities to access

  prosperous, resilient and fulfilling lives. Investing in education and

  skills is considered one of the most important ways to support young

  people''s well-being and to enable them to enjoy good career prospects.

  Using the framework of human capital theory, we explored the role of

  education among the factors explaining wage variation among Romanian

  youth. We built our analysis on micro-data for Romania from the EU

  Statistics on Income and Living Conditions 2020. In order to identify

  the most important factors influencing the wage distribution, we

  employed the elastic net regression approach. Moreover, we considered

  the phenomenon of expansion of education and ran the analysis by

  alternately using a traditional measure for education and a relative

  measure reflecting the theory of education as positional good. We ran

  the analysis for different cohorts of the population, focusing the

  discussion on the results for young people. Our findings confirm the

  importance of education for wage distribution together with other

  factors of influence, such as gender, degree of urbanization, region,

  sector of employment and working experience. Our conclusions are

  relevant for designing more effective educational and social policies to

  deal with various disadvantages faced by youth in Romania.'
affiliation: 'Zamfir, AM (Corresponding Author), Natl Sci Res Inst Labour \& Social
  Protect, Dept Educ Training \& Labour Market, Bucharest 010643, Romania.

  Zamfir, Ana-Maria; Davidescu, Adriana AnaMaria; Mocanu, Cristina, Natl Sci Res Inst
  Labour \& Social Protect, Dept Educ Training \& Labour Market, Bucharest 010643,
  Romania.

  Davidescu, Adriana AnaMaria, Bucharest Univ Econ Studies, Dept Stat \& Econometr,
  Bucharest 010552, Romania.'
article-number: '9394'
author: Zamfir, Ana-Maria and Davidescu, Adriana AnaMaria and Mocanu, Cristina
author-email: 'anazamfir2002@yahoo.com

  adriana.alexandru@csie.ase.ro

  mocanu@incsmps.ro'
author_list:
- family: Zamfir
  given: Ana-Maria
- family: Davidescu
  given: Adriana AnaMaria
- family: Mocanu
  given: Cristina
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159394
eissn: 1660-4601
files: []
journal: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
keywords: human capital theory; expansion of education; youth; earnings
keywords-plus: REGULARIZATION; COUNTRIES; RETURNS
language: English
month: AUG
number: '15'
number-of-cited-references: '38'
orcid-numbers: 'Davidescu, Adriana AnaMaria/0000-0002-9847-1200

  Mocanu, Cristina/0009-0000-4775-0798'
papis_id: 38e4a63ed4772dd60b1a1b5c785519a5
ref: Zamfir2022predictorseconomic
researcherid-numbers: 'Zamfir, Ana/HTL-3142-2023

  '
times-cited: '0'
title: 'Predictors of Economic Outcomes among Romanian Youth: The Influence of Education-An
  Empirical Approach Based on Elastic Net Regression'
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:000840255600001
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '0'
volume: '19'
web-of-science-categories: Environmental Sciences; Public, Environmental \& Occupational
  Health
year: '2022'