IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v108y2025ics0272775725000810.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The labour market returns to graduation: reconciling administrative and survey data estimates

Author

Listed:
  • Adamecz, Anna
  • Dickson, Matt
  • Shure, Nikki

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on the earnings returns to university graduation. Recent evidence using administrative earnings data from England suggests a zero return to graduation for men and positive returns to graduation for women in annual earnings at age 26. We show that once hours worked are taken into account – typically not available in administrative tax data – returns to graduation in hourly wages are considerably smaller for women than returns in annual wages at this age. Graduate women work more hours than comparable non-graduate women; thus, not taking hours worked into account leads to overestimating returns to graduation for women by more than two-fold. This highlights the importance of using both survey and administrative data sources when estimating the returns to university graduation.

Suggested Citation

  • Adamecz, Anna & Dickson, Matt & Shure, Nikki, 2025. "The labour market returns to graduation: reconciling administrative and survey data estimates," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:108:y:2025:i:c:s0272775725000810
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775725000810
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102701?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education

    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:eee:ecoedu:v:108:y:2025:i:c:s0272775725000810. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    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.