IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/8108.html

Trends in Quality Adjusted Skill Premia in the US, 1960-2000

Author

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the average quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 6 percentage points in the college premium. We show that although a standard demand and supply framework can qualitatively account for the trend in the college and age premia over this period, substantial quantitative adjustments still need to be made to account for changes in quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Carneiro, Pedro, 2010. "Trends in Quality Adjusted Skill Premia in the US, 1960-2000," CEPR Discussion Papers 8108, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP8108
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro Carneiro & James J. Heckman & Edward J. Vytlacil, 2011. "Estimating Marginal Returns to Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2754-2781, October.
    2. Bishop, John Hillman, 1989. "Is the Test Score Decline Responsible for the Productivity Growth Decline?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 178-197, March.
    3. Murnane, Richard J & Willett, John B & Levy, Frank, 1995. "The Growing Importance of Cognitive Skills in Wage Determination," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(2), pages 251-266, May.
    4. David Card & Thomas Lemieux, 2001. "Can Falling Supply Explain the Rising Return to College for Younger Men? A Cohort-Based Analysis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 705-746.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Flavio Cunha & Fatih Karahan & Ilton Soares, 2011. "Returns to Skills and the College Premium," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(s1), pages 39-86, August.
    2. Pedro Carneiro & Michael Lokshin & Nithin Umapathi, 2017. "Average and Marginal Returns to Upper Secondary Schooling in Indonesia," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 16-36, January.
    3. Ross, Matthew, 2014. "Skill Biased Technical Change: Wage Effects from a Panel of Occupational Task Measures," MPRA Paper 63732, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Apr 2015.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pedro Carneiro & Sokbae Lee, 2011. "Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Premia in the United States, 1960-2000," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2309-2349, October.
    2. Eric A. Hanushek & Victor Lavy & Kohtaro Hitomi, 2008. "Do Students Care about School Quality? Determinants of Dropout Behavior in Developing Countries," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 69-105.
    3. Philippe Belley & Lance Lochner, 2007. "The Changing Role of Family Income and Ability in Determining Educational Achievement," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 37-89.
    4. Pedro Carneiro & Michael Lokshin & Nithin Umapathi, 2017. "Average and Marginal Returns to Upper Secondary Schooling in Indonesia," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 16-36, January.
    5. Piopiunik, Marc & Schwerdt, Guido & Simon, Lisa & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Skills, signals, and employability: An experimental investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    6. Ludger Woessmann, 2024. "Skills and Earnings: A Multidimensional Perspective on Human Capital," CESifo Working Paper Series 11428, CESifo.
    7. Angel de la Fuente & Antonio Ciccone, 2003. "Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 562.03, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    8. Burgess, Simon, 2016. "Human Capital and Education: The State of the Art in the Economics of Education," IZA Discussion Papers 9885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Renee Reichl Luthra & Jennifer Flashman, 2017. "Who Benefits Most from a University Degree?: A Cross-National Comparison of Selection and Wage Returns in the US, UK, and Germany," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(8), pages 843-878, December.
    10. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Xiaoxiao Li & Evan Totty, 2020. "Multidimensional skills and the returns to schooling: Evidence from an interactive fixed‐effects approach and a linked survey‐administrative data set," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 548-566, August.
    11. Wößmann, Ludger, 2001. "New Evidence on the Missing Resource-Performance Link in Education," Kiel Working Papers 1051, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    12. Eric A. Hanushek, 2004. "Some Simple Analytics of School Quality," NBER Working Papers 10229, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Falch, Torberg & Nyhus, Ole Henning & Strøm, Bjarne, 2014. "Causal effects of mathematics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 174-187.
    14. Manudeep Bhuller & Magne Mogstad & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2017. "Life-Cycle Earnings, Education Premiums, and Internal Rates of Return," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(4), pages 993-1030.
    15. Eric A. Hanushek & Jens Ruhose & Ludger Woessmann, 2015. "Human Capital Quality and Aggregate Income Differences: Development Accounting for U.S. States," CESifo Working Paper Series 5411, CESifo.
    16. Hanushek, Eric A. & Luque, Javier A., 2003. "Efficiency and equity in schools around the world," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 481-502, October.
    17. Eric A. Hanushek & Jens Ruhose & Ludger Woessmann, 2017. "Knowledge Capital and Aggregate Income Differences: Development Accounting for US States," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 184-224, October.
    18. Hanushek, Eric A. & Schwerdt, Guido & Wiederhold, Simon & Woessmann, Ludger, 2015. "Returns to skills around the world: Evidence from PIAAC," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 103-130.
    19. Song, Moohoun & Orazem, Peter, 2005. "Returns to Graduate and Professional Education: The Roles of Mathematical and Verbal Skills by Major," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12432, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    20. Philippe Belley & Marc Frenette & Lance Lochner, 2010. "Post-Secondary Attendance by Parental Income: Comparing the U.S. and Canada," University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers 20103, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General

    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:cpr:ceprdp:8108. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.