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Journal Article
Why Are Life-Cycle Earnings Profiles Getting Flatter?
The authors present a simple, two-period model of human capital accumulation on the job and through college attainment. They use a calibrated version of the model to explain the observed flattening of the life-cycle earnings profiles of two cohorts of workers. The model accounts for more than 55 percent of the observed flattening for high school-educated and for college-educated workers. Two channels generate the flattening in the model: selection (or higher college attainment) and a higher skill price for the more recent cohort. Absent selection, the model would have accounted for no ...
Journal Article
Student Loans Under the Risk of Youth Unemployment
While most college graduates eventually find jobs that match their qualifications, the possibility of long spells of unemployment and/or underemployment?combined with ensuing difficulties in repaying student loans?may limit and even dissuade productive investments in human capital. The author explores the optimal design of student loans when young college graduates can be unemployed and reaches three main conclusions. First, the optimal student loan program must incorporate an unemployment compensation mechanism as a key element, even if unemployment probabilities are endogenous and subject ...
Discussion Paper
The Cost of College Continues to Climb
College is much more expensive than it used to be. Tuition for a bachelor’s degree has more than tripled from an (inflation-adjusted) average of about $5,000 per year in the 1970s to around $18,000 today. For many parents and prospective students, this high and rising tuition has raised concerns about whether getting a college degree is still worth it—a question we addressed in a 2014 study. In this post, we update that study, estimating the cost of college in terms of both out-of-pocket expenses, like tuition, and opportunity costs, the wages one gives up to attend school. We find that ...
Working Paper
Explaining Cross-Cohort Differences in Life Cycle Earnings
College-educated workers entering the labor market in 1940 experienced a 4-fold increase in their labor earnings between the ages of 25 and 55; in contrast, the increase was 2.6-fold for those entering the market in 1980. For workers without a college education these figures are 3.6-fold and 1.5-fold, respectively. Why are earnings profiles flatter for recent cohorts? We build a parsimonious model of schooling and human capital accumulation on the job and calibrate it to earnings statistics of workers from the 1940 cohort. The model accounts for 99 percent of the flattening of earnings ...
Working Paper
Test Questions, Economic Outcomes, and Inequality
Standard achievement scales aggregate test questions without considering their relationship to economic outcomes. This paper uses question-level data to improve the measurement of achievement in two ways. First, the paper constructs alternative achievement scales by relating individual questions directly to school completion and labor market outcomes. Second, the paper leverages the question data to construct multiple such scales in order to correct for biases stemming from measurement error. These new achievement scales rank students differently than standard scales and typically yield ...
Working Paper
Schooling and Political Activism in the Early Civil Rights Era
Does education lead to political engagement? The empirical literature is mixed. Theory suggests economic context matters. Individuals unable to take advantage of education in the labor market are more likely to engage in political activity. We find support for this channel during the rapid expansion of NAACP branches in the South around WWII. Branch growth was stronger where Black workers were denied returns to schooling due to Jim Crow occupational discrimination. We further show that a pre-1931 large-scale school construction program caused greater NAACP activity during the 1940s and 1950s ...
Working Paper
Institution, Major, and Firm-Specific Premia: Evidence from Administrative Data
We examine how a student's field of degree and institution attended contribute to the labor market outcomes of young graduates. Administrative panel data that combines student transcripts with matched employer-employee records allow us to provide the first decomposition of premia into individual and firm-specific components. We find that both major and institutional premia are more strongly related to the firm-specific component of wages than the individual-specific component of wages. On average, a student's major is a more important predictor of future wages than the selectivity of the ...
Working Paper
Causes and Consequences of Student-College Mismatch
College admissions are highly meritocratic in the U.S. today. It is not the case in many other countries. What is the tradeoff? On one hand, meritocracy produces more human capital overall if higher ability students learn more in college and if they learn more in higher quality colleges. This leads to a higher overall level of earnings (i.e. greater efficiency, loosely speaking). On the other hand, more meritocracy generates a higher degree of earnings inequality. In this paper, we quantify this efficiency-equality tradeoff. Our results suggest small efficiency losses/gains from student ...
Working Paper
ivcrc: An Instrumental Variables Estimator for the Correlated Random Coefficients Model
We present the ivcrc command, which implements an instrumental variables (IV) estimator for the linear correlated random coefficients (CRC) model. This model is a natural generalization of the standard linear IV model that allows for endogenous, multivalued treatments and unobserved heterogeneity in treatment effects. The proposed estimator uses recent semiparametric identification results that allow for flexible functional forms and permit instruments that may be binary, discrete, or continuous. The command also allows for the estimation of varying coefficients regressions, which are ...
Report
Financial aid, debt management, and socioeconomic outcomes: post-college effects of merit-based aid
Prior research has demonstrated that financial aid can influence both college enrollments and completions, but less is known about its post-college consequences. Even for students whose attainment is unaffected, financial aid may affect post-college outcomes via reductions in both time to degree and debt at graduation. We utilize two complementary quasi-experimental strategies to identify causal effects of the WV PROMISE scholarship, a broad-based state merit aid program, up to ten years post-college-entry. This study is the first to link college transcripts and financial aid information to ...