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Returns to Skills and the College Premium

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  • FLAVIO CUNHA
  • FATIH KARAHAN
  • ILTON SOARES

Abstract

A substantial literature documents the evolution of the college premium in the U.S. labor market over the last 40 years or so. There are at least three different interpretations of this fact: (i) shifts in the relative supply of and demand for college versus high school labor, (ii) shifts in the relative supply of and demand for skills in the college versus high school sector, and (iii) composition effects. We investigate how each of these components contributes to the dynamics of the college premium and find that all three play a role, but the increase in the college premium is primarily driven by the first component. We also find that during the 1980s, the college premium for high school workers diverged from the college premium for college workers and a substantial fraction of the gap that opens up is primarily due to the increase in the returns to cognitive skills.
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Suggested Citation

  • Flavio Cunha & Fatih Karahan & Ilton Soares, 2011. "Returns to Skills and the College Premium," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 39-86, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcb:jmoncb:v:43:y:2011:i::p:39-86
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    Cited by:

    1. Wolcott, Erin L., 2021. "Employment inequality: Why do the low-skilled work less now?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 161-177.
    2. Dominik Sachs & Sebastian Findeisen, 2016. "Optimal Financial Aid Policies for Students," 2016 Meeting Papers 1421, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Mark Colas & Sebastian Findeisen & Dominik Sachs, 2021. "Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(2), pages 492-533.
    4. Gea M. Lee & Seung Han Yoo, 2013. "Unobserved Investment, Signaling, and Welfare," Discussion Paper Series 1301, Institute of Economic Research, Korea University, revised 2017.
    5. Findeisen, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2015. "Designing efficient college and tax policies," Working Papers 15-09, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    6. Christian Belzil & Jörgen Hansen, 2020. "Reconciling Changes in Wage Inequality With Changes in College Selectivity Using a Behavioral Model," CIRANO Working Papers 2020s-36, CIRANO.
    7. Leila Bengali & Mary C. Daly, 2014. "Is it still worth going to college?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    8. Christian Belzil & Jörgen Hansen, 2020. "The evolution of the US family income–schooling relationship and educational selectivity," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 841-859, November.
    9. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Xiaoxiao Li & Linh Nguyen & Evan Totty, 2024. "The efficacy of ability proxies for estimating the returns to schooling: A factor model‐based evaluation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 3-21, January.
    10. Sacha Kapoor & Matthijs Oosterveen & Dinand Webbink, 2021. "The price of forced attendance," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 209-227, March.
    11. Christian Belzil & Jörgen Hansen & Xingfei Liu, 2022. "The Evolution of Inequality in Education Trajectories and Graduation Outcomes in the US," Working Papers 2022-12, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    12. Liu, Liyi & McManus, Douglas, 2024. "Impact of skills in early adulthood on lifetime homeownership disparities," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Sachs, Dominik & Findeisen, Sebastian, 2014. "Designing Efficient Education and Tax Policies," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100504, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Helu Jiang & Faisal Sohail, 2023. "Skill-Biased Entrepreneurial Decline," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 48, pages 18-44, April.
    15. Lin, Dajun & Lutter, Randall & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2018. "Cognitive performance and labour market outcomes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 121-135.

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