IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Advanced Degrees on the Wage Rates, Hours, Earnings and Job Satisfaction of Women and Men

Author

Listed:
  • Altonji, Joseph G.

    (Yale University)

  • Humphries, John Eric

    (Yale University)

  • Zhong, Ling

    (Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business)

Abstract

This paper uses a college-by-graduate degree fixed effects estimator to evaluate the returns to 19 different graduate degrees for men and women. We find substantial variation across degrees, and evidence that OLS over-estimates the returns to degrees with the highest average earnings and underestimates the returns to degrees with the lowest average earnings. Second, we decompose the impacts on earnings into effects on wage rates and effects on hours. For most degrees, the earnings gains come from increased wage rates, though hours play an important role in some degrees, such as medicine, especially for women. Third, we estimate the net present value and internal rate of return for each degree, which account for the time and monetary costs of degrees. Finally, we provide descriptive evidence that satisfaction gains are large for some degrees with smaller economic returns, such as education and humanities degrees, especially for men.

Suggested Citation

  • Altonji, Joseph G. & Humphries, John Eric & Zhong, Ling, 2022. "The Effects of Advanced Degrees on the Wage Rates, Hours, Earnings and Job Satisfaction of Women and Men," IZA Discussion Papers 15010, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15010.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    job satisfaction; earnings; returns to graduate education; gender differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15010. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.