Volunteering is perceived as benefiting youth by facilitating university entry and access to better employment. However, little empirical evidence exists to show whether such perceptions are justified. Therefore, this article presents data on volunteering and attainment from a representative sample of Australians who were born around 1990 and…

Background: Studies demonstrate that occupational optimism can boost adolescents' academic attainment and perseverance in education. To contribute to this literature, we consider two hypotheses. The first posits that bilingual immigrants are remarkably resourceful and determined. Thus, they are more occupationally ambitious than their peers. The…

Although the gender gap in non-compulsory science attracts much attention, few studies compare factors that shape it at subsequent life stages. Here, a life-course approach is used to examine the gender gap in science career expectations at ages 16, 23 and 26 for a recent student cohort. Then, a decomposition is applied to assess what share of the…

While research on adolescent occupational expectations is voluminous, it either ignores students who do not report any career plans or imputes their answers. Consequently, little is known about the potential consequences that not having clear occupational expectations in adolescence might have for educational and occupational attainment in young…

Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2006 surveys for 50 countries, this paper explores gender segregation of adolescent science career plans. We ask whether, in different cultures, bridging the male-female gap in science self-concept could reduce gender disparities in students' career preferences. Bringing together the…

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of adolescent career plans reported in PISA 2006. Its main focus is on the differences in the status and area of employment expected by girls and boys in high school. In almost all countries, girls lead boys in their interest in non-manual, high status professional occupations. This can be seen as a…

Given ongoing interest in increasing productivity and participation in the workforce, understanding when talent is lost is a useful exercise. The term "lost talent" describes the underutilisation or wastage of human potential. Focusing on young people, Sikora and Saha define lost talent as occurring when students in the top 50% of…

This document was produced by the authors based on their research for the report "Lost talent? The occupational ambitions and attainments of young Australians", and is an added resource for further information. The purpose of this supplement is to provide greater detail about the background of research into the topic of human talent in…

In this article, we investigate whether adolescent girls are more determined to enter professional careers compared to boys across countries. To this end, we analyse the data from the 2006 survey of OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). First, we establish whether girls are more ambitious than boys net of their academic…