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The causal effect of education on earnings
TL;DR: This paper surveys the recent literature on the causal relationship between education and earnings and concludes that the average (or average marginal) return to education is not much below the estimate that emerges from a standard human capital earnings function fit by OLS.
Abstract: This paper surveys the recent literature on the causal relationship between education and earnings. I focus on four areas of work: theoretical and econometric advances in modelling the causal effect of education in the presence of heterogeneous returns to schooling; recent studies that use institutional aspects of the education system to form instrumental variables estimates of the return to schooling; recent studies of the earnings and schooling of twins; and recent attempts to explicitly model sources of heterogeneity in the returns to education. Consistent with earlier surveys of the literature, I conclude that the average (or average marginal) return to education is not much below the estimate that emerges from a standard human capital earnings function fit by OLS. Evidence from the latest studies of identical twins suggests a small upward "ability" bias -- on the order of 10%. A consistent finding among studies using instrumental variables based on institutional changes in the education system is that the estimated returns to schooling are 20-40% above the corresponding OLS estimates. Part of the explanation for this finding may be that marginal returns to schooling for certain subgroups -- particularly relatively disadvantaged groups with low education outcomes -- are higher than the average marginal returns to education in the population as a whole.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors survey noncompetitive theories of training and draw some tentative policy conclusions from these models, concluding that firms never pay for investments in general training, whereas when labor markets are imperfect, firm sponsored training arises as an equilibrium phenomenon.
Abstract: In this paper, the authors survey noncompetitive theories of training. With competitive labor markets, firms never pay for investments in general training, whereas when labor markets are imperfect, firm-sponsored training arises as an equilibrium phenomenon. The authors discuss a variety of evidence that supports the predictions of noncompetitive theories and they draw some tentative policy conclusions from these models.
839 citations
TL;DR: The role of education in promoting economic well-being, focusing on the role of educational quality, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of education in promoting economic well-being, focusing on the role of educational quality. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population-rather than mere school attainment-are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empirical results show the importance of both minimal and high-level skills, the complementarity of skills and the quality of economic institutions, and the robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing countries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes it clear that closing the economic gap with industrial countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.
808 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors construct a set of meta-estimates of the coefficient of years of schooling in an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function and show that after correcting for measurement error bias, the value of this parameter is well above 0.50.
Abstract: We construct estimates of educational attainment for a sample of OECD countries using previously unexploited sources. We follow a heuristic approach to obtain plausible time profiles for attainment levels by removing sharp breaks in the data that seem to reflect changes in classification criteria. We then construct indicators of the information content of our series and a number of previously available data sets and examine their performance in several growth specifications. We find a clear positive correlation between data quality and the size and significance of human capital coefficients in growth regressions. Using an extension of the classical errors in variables model, we construct a set of metaestimates of the coefficient of years of schooling in an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function. Our results suggest that, after correcting for measurement error bias, the value of this parameter is well above 0.50.
791 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the family income-college enrolment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling and distinguished short run liquidity constraints from the long term factors that promote cognitive and non-cognitive ability.
Abstract: This paper examines the family income–college enrolment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling. We distinguish short run liquidity constraints from the long term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long run factors crystallised in ability are the major determinants of the family income - schooling relationship, although there is some evidence that up to 8% of the total US population is credit constrained in a short run sense. Evidence that IV estimates of the returns to schooling exceed OLS estimates is sometimes claimed to support the existence of substantial credit constraints. This argument is critically examined.
788 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that Protestantism not only led to higher economic prosperity, but also to better education, with Protestants' higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity between the two groups.
Abstract: Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory: Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. We test the theory using county-level data from late-nineteenth-century Prussia, exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the Reformation to use distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism. We find that Protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity, but also to better education. Our results are consistent with Protestants' higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity.
760 citations