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Sarah Turner

Bio: Sarah Turner is an academic researcher from University of Virginia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Higher education & Educational attainment. The author has an hindex of 35, co-authored 106 publications receiving 5766 citations. Previous affiliations of Sarah Turner include Curry School of Education & National Bureau of Economic Research.


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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors decompose the observed changes in college completion rates into the component due to changes in the preparedness of entering students and the part due to collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student.
Abstract: Partly as a consequence of the substantial increase in the college wage premium since 1980, a much higher fraction of high school graduates enter college today than they did a quarter century ago. However, the rise in the fraction of high school graduates attending college has not been met by a proportional increase in the fraction who finish. Comparing two cohorts from the high school classes of 1972 and 1992, we show eight-year college completion rates declined nationally, and this decline is most pronounced amongst men beginning college at less-selective public 4-year schools and amongst students starting at community colleges. We decompose the observed changes in completion rates into the component due to changes in the preparedness of entering students and the component due to collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student. We find that, while both factors play a role, it is the collegiate characteristics that are more important. A central contribution of this analysis is to show the importance of the supply-side of the higher education in explaining changes in college completion.

537 citations

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TL;DR: In this article, detailed data on choice of major and individual scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are used to examine the extent to which observed differences between men and women reflect the effects of pre-collegiate preparation (as reflected in SAT scores), as contrasted with a panoply of other forces.
Abstract: Within the arts, sciences, and engineering fields, differences between men and women in choice of college major have not lessened in the past two decades. In this paper, detailed data on choice of major and individual scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are used to examine the extent to which observed differences between men and women reflect the effects of pre-collegiate preparation (as reflected in SAT scores), as contrasted with a panoply of other forces. One conclusion is that there is a widening divide between the life sciences and math/physical science fields in their relative attractiveness to men and women. Differences in SAT scores account for only part of the observed gap, and an array of residual forces—including differences in preferences, labor market expectations, and gender-specific effects of the college experience—account for the main part of today's gender gaps in choice of academic major.

386 citations

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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors move the discussion of student loans away from anecdote by establishing a framework for considering the use of student loan in the optimal financing of collegiate investments and show that enrolling in college is equivalent to signing up for a lottery with large expected gains, but it is also a better investment today than a generation ago.
Abstract: Total student loan debt rose to over $800 billion in June 2010, overtaking total credit card debt outstanding for the first time. By the time this article sees print, the continually updated Student Loan Debt Clock will show an accumulated total of roughly $1 trillion. Borrowing to finance educational expenditures has been increasing - more than quadrupling in real dollars since the early 1990s. The sheer magnitude of these figures has led to increased public commentary on the level of student borrowing. [The authors] move the discussion of student loans away from anecdote by establishing a framework for considering the use of student loans in the optimal financing of collegiate investments. From a financial perspective, enrolling in college is equivalent to signing up for a lottery with large expected gains - indeed, the figures presented here suggest that college is, on average, a better investment today than it was a generation ago - but it is also a lottery with significant probabilities of both larger positive, and smaller or even negative, returns. [The authors] look to available - albeit limited - evidence to assess which types of students are likely to be borrowing too much or too little.

383 citations

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TL;DR: This article decompose the decline in college completion into the components due to changes in preparedness of entering students and changes in collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student, and show that the supply-side characteristics are most important in explaining changes in the college completion rate.
Abstract: Rising college enrollment over the last quarter century has not been met with a proportional increase in college completion. Comparing the high school classes of 1972 and 1992, we show declines in college completion rates have been most pronounced for men who first enroll in less selective public universities and community colleges. We decompose the decline into the components due to changes in preparedness of entering students and due to changes in collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student. While both factors play some role, the supply-side characteristics are most important in explaining changes in college completion. (JEL I23)

367 citations

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TL;DR: This article found that the net effect of military service and G.I. benefits was substantial gains in the collegiate attainment of World War II veterans and non-veterans in the US.
Abstract: The flood of veterans enrolling in college at the end of World War II contributed to widespread rhetoric that the G.I. Bill brought about the “democratization” of American higher education. Whether military service, combined with educational benefits, led World War II veterans to increase their investments in college has received little research attention. Our estimation strategy focuses on between‐cohort differences in military service, and we use census data to compare the collegiate attainment of veterans and nonveterans. The net effect of military service and G.I. benefits was substantial gains in the collegiate attainment of World War II veterans.

294 citations


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TL;DR: A Treatise on the Family by G. S. Becker as discussed by the authors is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics.
Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

4,817 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Thaler and Sunstein this paper described a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications, as a general approach to how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society.
Abstract: NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

3,435 citations

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TL;DR: It is concluded that multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys should be considered as a legitimate method for answering the question of why people do not respond to survey questions.
Abstract: 25. Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys. By D. B. Rubin. ISBN 0 471 08705 X. Wiley, Chichester, 1987. 258 pp. £30.25.

3,216 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables and showed that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect.
Abstract: We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

3,154 citations

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3,152 citations