This study uses US survey data (NLSY) and Swedish register data to estimate the relationship between returns to schooling and ability for each country separately. A significant and positive relationship is found for Sweden but not for the US. The purpose is to propose an explanation for why such differences might occur. While many studies have focused on whether credit constraints result in ine...

The extensive literature on individual returns to education has been very influential on the thinking of economists and policymakers alike regarding the optimal amount of education for an individual and also the kinds of intervention that governments can or should undertake in educational markets. Wolfe and Haveman argue that many important social and nonmarket returns from schooling are being ...

Measuring the returns to schooling over an extended period in Russia and Ukraine from 1985 to 2002, we find an increase in both countries but the increase is much bigger in Russia than in Ukraine. To investigate why returns to schooling in Russia and Ukraine diverged over the transition period while the skill composition of employment did not, we compare the Mincerian earnings functions between...

We study the effects of accessing better healthcare on the schooling and labor supply decisions of sick children in Tanzania. Using variation in the cost of formal sector healthcare to predict treatment choice, we show that accessing better healthcare decreases length of illness and changes children's allocation of time to school and work. Children attend school for more days per week--but not ...

A consensus has been forged in the last decade that recent periods of sustained growth in total factor productivity and reduced poverty are closely associated with improvements in a population’s child nutrition, adult health, and schooling, particularly in low-income countries. Estimates of the productive returns from these three forms of human capital investment are nonetheless qualified by a ...

Causal Returns to Schooling and Individual Heterogeneity E-mail: In this paper, human capital investments are evaluated by assuming heterogeneous returns to schooling. We use the potential outcome approach to measure the causal effect of human capital investments on earnings as a continuous treatment effect. Empirical evidence is based on a sample of West German full-time employed males (BIBB/I...

To a large degree, the expansion of student aid programs to potential college students over the past 25 years in the United States has been based on the presumption that borrowing constraints present an obstacle to obtaining a college education. Economists and sociologists studying schooling choices have found empirical support for college subsidies in the well-documented, large positive correl...

Unobserved Ability and the Return to Schooling We estimate a structural dynamic programming model of schooling decisions with unobserved heterogeneity in school ability and market ability on a sample taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Both the instantaneous utility of attending school and the wage regression function are estimated flexibly. The null hypothesis that the...

— Women and men often receive the same percentage increase in their wage rates with advances in schooling. Because these returns decline with more schooling, the marginal returns for women will tend to exceed those for men, especially in countries where women are much less educated. The health and schooling of children are more closely related to their mother’s education than father’s. More edu...