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Why is the Rate of Return to Schooling Higher For Women Than For Men?

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Author Info
C Dougherty
Abstract

The rate of return to schooling appears to be nearly two percentage points greater for females than for males in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set, despite the fact that females tend to earn less, both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics. A survey of previous studies reporting wage equations reveals that a higher return to female schooling appears to be the norm, although it has not attracted comment. This paper considers various explanations. The most important involves the detrimental impact of discrimination and other factors that cause women to accept wage offers that undervalue their characteristics. It is hypothesized that the better educated is a woman, the more able and willing she is to overcome the se handicaps and compete with men in the labour market, and an index of discrimination disaggregated by years of schooling is constructed using Oaxaca decompositions. This index is indeed negatively correlated with schooling and it accounts for about one half of the differential in the male and female schooling coefficients. Next considered is the possibility that part of the differential could be attributable to male-female differences in the quality of educational attainment, as proxied by their academic outcomes in high school. The NLSY females did indeed perform better than the males, but there is little association between academic attainment and Earnings and allowing for it made no difference to the estimate of the differential in the returns to schooling. The third explanation considered is that women choose to work in sectors where education is relatively highly valued. Controlling for this effect does indeed account for much of the remainingdifferential.

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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Performance, LSE in its series CEP Discussion Papers with number dp0581.

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Date of creation: Aug 2003
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Related research
Keywords: returns to education; wage equations;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
  3. Kenny, Lawrence W, et al, 1979. "Returns to College Education: An Investigation of Self-Selection Bias Based on the Project Talent Data," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 20(3), pages 775-89, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Reimers, Cordelia W, 1983. "Labor Market Discrimination against Hispanic and Black Men," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(4), pages 570-79, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Brown, Charles & Corcoran, Mary, 1997. "Sex-Based Differences in School Content and the Male-Female Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 431-65, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Oaxaca, Ronald L. & Ransom, Michael R., 1994. "On discrimination and the decomposition of wage differentials," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 5-21, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  27. Gunderson, Morley, 1989. "Male-Female Wage Differentials and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 46-72, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  29. Baltagi, Badi H. & Boozer, Michael A., 1997. "Econometric Analysis of Panel Data," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(05), pages 747-754, October. [Downloadable!]
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Fleisher, Belton M. & Sabirianova, Klara & Wang, Xiaojun, 2004. "Returns to Skills and the Speed of Reforms: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe, China, and Russia," IZA Discussion Papers 1182, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Francesco Pastore, 2008. "School-to-work-transitions in Mongolia," Employment Working Papers 2008-14, International Labour Office. [Downloadable!]
  3. Floro Ernesto Caroleo, Francesco Pastore, 2004. "La disoccupazione giovanile in Italia. La riforma dei sistemi d'istruzione e di formazione professionale come alternativa alla flessibilità numerica per accrescere l'occupabilità," CELPE Discussion Papers 83, CELPE (Centre of Labour Economics and Economic Policy), University of Salerno, Italy. [Downloadable!]
  4. Pastore, Francesco & Verashchagina, Alina, 2004. "The Distribution of Wages in Belarus," IZA Discussion Papers 1140, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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