This thesis contains three empirical chapters on young people's educational opportunities, attitudes and aspirations in both developing and developed countries. In Chapter 2, we evaluate the medium-run impact of Familias en Accion, a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme, on the school enrolment probability of 7 to 17 year old Colombian children living in rural areas of the country. Our difference-in-differences estimates find no significant programme effects but significant, even if small in magnitude, anticipation effects. This poses doubts on the efficacy of CCT programmes in reducing income inequality in the longrun and in stimulating the demand for formal education in the short-run. In Chapter 3, we use data from the youth component of the British Household Panel Survey to examine gender differences in educational attitudes and aspirations among 11 to 15 year olds. While girls have more positive aspirations and attitudes than boys, the impacts of gender on children's attitudes and aspirations vary significantly with parental education level, parental attitudes to education, child's age and the indirect cost of education. These findings have implications for policies designed to reduce educational attainment differences between boys and girls as they identify factors which exacerbate the educational disadvantage of boys relative to girls. In Chapter 4, we evaluate the impact of parental education and household income on 10 to 15 year olds ' aspirations for higher education using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey. OLS estimates reveal no maternal education effects but positive paternal education and household income effects. IV estimates of the model, which simultaneously account for endogeneity in parental education and household income, find no significant effects of household income on children's aspirations for higher education but positive, even though very imprecisely identified, paternal education effects.