How Convincing Is The Evidence Linking Education and Income?

Author
Keywords
Abstract

Is the correlation between income and educational attainment a result of
the payoff to investments in schooling? Since the experiment of randomly
selecting individuals to go to school cannot be performed, non-experimental
methods must be used to estimate the economic returns to schooling. This
paper reviews new studies that measure the effect of schooling on income (1)
by using comparisons of brothers, fathers and sons, and twins and (2) that
focus on natural experiments. These studies provide very credible evidence
that schooling does increase incomes and that earlier studies may have under-
estimated the role of schooling in determining incomes.

Year of Publication
1991
Number
292
Date Published
11/1991
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
Labour Economics and Productivity, Vol. 6, 1994
URL
Working Papers