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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: The authors reviewed evidence on the family origins of racial differences in young children's test scores and considered how much of the gap is due to differences in the economic and demographic conditions in which black and white children grow up.
134 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the control function approach to identify the average treatment effect and the effect of treatment on the treated in models with a continuous endogenous regressor whose impact is heterogeneous.
Abstract: We use the control function approach to identify the average treatment effect and the effect of treatment on the treated in models with a continuous endogenous regressor whose impact is heterogeneous. We assume a stochastic polynomial restriction on the form of the heterogeneity, but unlike alternative nonparametric control function approaches, our approach does not require large support assumptions.
133 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that children from poorer families are more likely to participate in post-compulsory education, and that the family characteristic effects dominate the financial constraint effects, while a financial transfer would not lead to a significant increase in schooling investment.
Abstract: Children from poorer backgrounds are generally observed to have lower educational outcomes than other youth. However, the mechanism through which household income affects the child's outcomes remains unclear. Either, poorer families are financially constrained or some characteristics of the family make the children less likely to participate in post-compulsory education. We propose a methodology that separates financial and familial effects. As in previous studies, we find that pupils from poorer families are less likely to invest in education. However, a financial transfer would not lead to a significant increase in schooling investment, which supports the view that the family characteristic effects dominate the financial constraint effects.
133 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes how age grouping in youth competitions and soccer education programs affects wage formation at the professional level and shows that professional players born late after the cutoff date are expected to earn systematically higher wages than their early-born peers.
Abstract: This article analyzes how age grouping in youth competitions and soccer education programs affects wage formation at the professional level. A simple theoretical model shows that professional players born late after the cutoff date are expected to earn systematically higher wages than their early-born peers. Two discriminating factors are responsible for this: a systematic bias in the talent detection system and peer effects in the production process of human (sports) capital. The authors demonstrate the existence of such an effect among (native) German professional soccer players. Estimating an earnings function for players in the 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 seasons, the authors find clear evidence of a month-of-birth-related wage bias. Players born late after the cutoff date earn systematically higher wages, though this effect is not discernible in all positions; it is strongest for goalkeepers and defenders but not evident for forwards.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the role of age at immigration for the school performance gap between native and immigrant pupils in Sweden was analyzed, exploiting within-family variation in a large set of register data on immigrant siblings (and native children) between 1988 and 2003.
132 citations