Catholic schools or school quality? The effects of Catholic schools on labor market outcomes

This paper studies the effects of attending a Catholic high school on students’ labor market outcomes. Using data from theWisconsin Longitudinal Study, I find that Catholic schooling is significantly associatedwith higherwages over the careers even after taking into account possible selection into Catholic schools with instruments. Using matched school quality data for public and Catholic schools, I further find that Catholic and public schools are different in various aspects of school quality measures and that these differences explain most of Catholic school effects. Among the school quality variables, teacher quality and the number ofmath courses taken are estimated tomatter themost for students’ later earnings