IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp10747.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Distribution of Returns to Education for People with Disabilities

Author

Listed:
  • Henderson, Daniel J.

    (University of Alabama)

  • Houtenville, Andrew

    (University of New Hampshire)

  • Wang, Le

    (Virginia Tech)

Abstract

This note takes a first look at the distribution of returns to education for people with disabilities, a particularly disadvantaged group whose labor market performances have not been well studied or documented. Using a nonparametric approach, we uncover significant heterogeneity in the returns to education for these workers, which is drastically masked by the conventional parametric methods. Based on these estimates, we construct the Sharpe ratio of human capital investment (taking into account its substantial risk), and our results corroborate on the claimed importance of human capital in improving these workers' wages. Our stochastic dominance tests, however, show that the returns to education for workers with disabilities, as a group, may have been affected more adversely in the most recent recession, relative to their non-disabled counterparts.

Suggested Citation

  • Henderson, Daniel J. & Houtenville, Andrew & Wang, Le, 2017. "The Distribution of Returns to Education for People with Disabilities," IZA Discussion Papers 10747, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10747
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp10747.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oliver Linton & Esfandiar Maasoumi & Yoon-Jae Whang, 2005. "Consistent Testing for Stochastic Dominance under General Sampling Schemes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 735-765.
    2. Congressional Budget Office, 2016. "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026," Reports 51129, Congressional Budget Office.
    3. repec:cbo:report:519082 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Almas Heshmati, 2000. "Stochastic dominance amongst swedish income distributions," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 287-320.
    5. Peter Hall & Qi Li & Jeffrey S. Racine, 2007. "Nonparametric Estimation of Regression Functions in the Presence of Irrelevant Regressors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 784-789, November.
    6. Katrine V. Løken & Magne Mogstad & Matthew Wiswall, 2012. "What Linear Estimators Miss: The Effects of Family Income on Child Outcomes," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-35, April.
    7. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022," Reports 43539, Congressional Budget Office.
    8. Racine, Jeff & Li, Qi, 2004. "Nonparametric estimation of regression functions with both categorical and continuous data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 99-130, March.
    9. Harmon, Colm & Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2003. "Dispersion in the economic return to schooling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 205-214, April.
    10. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    11. Congressional Budget Office, 2016. "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026," Reports 51129, Congressional Budget Office.
    12. Henderson, Daniel J. & Polachek, Solomon W. & Wang, Le, 2011. "Heterogeneity in schooling rates of return," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1202-1214.
    13. Heckman, James J. & Lochner, Lance J. & Todd, Petra E., 2006. "Earnings Functions, Rates of Return and Treatment Effects: The Mincer Equation and Beyond," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 307-458, Elsevier.
    14. Koop, Gary M & Tobias, Justin, 2004. "Learning About Heterogeneity in Returns to Schooling," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12008, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    15. Kevin Hollenbeck & Jean Kimmel, 2008. "Differences in the Returns to Education for Males by Disability Status and Age of Disability Onset," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 74(3), pages 707-724, January.
    16. Henderson,Daniel J. & Parmeter,Christopher F., 2015. "Applied Nonparametric Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521279680.
    17. repec:ucn:wpaper:10197/1100 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. repec:cbo:report:519081 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan & Roberto Rigobon, 2002. "Using heteroscedasticity to estimate the returns to education," Open Access publications 10197/1100, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    20. Congressional Budget Office, 2016. "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026," Reports 51129, Congressional Budget Office.
    21. Lamichhane, Kamal & Sawada, Yasuyuki, 2013. "Disability and returns to education in a developing country," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 85-94.
    22. 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.
    23. Ozkan Eren & Daniel J. Henderson, 2008. "The impact of homework on student achievement," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 11(2), pages 326-348, July.
    24. repec:aei:rpbook:24945 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Cunha, Flavio & Heckman, James J. & Lochner, Lance, 2006. "Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 697-812, Elsevier.
    26. Dickson, Matt & Harmon, Colm, 2011. "Economic returns to education: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and Where We Are Going—Some brief pointers," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1118-1122.
    27. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Keueger, 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 979-1014.
    28. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2003. "An Empirical Analysis of the Risk Properties of Human Capital Returns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 948-964, June.
    29. repec:mpr:mprres:7311 is not listed on IDEAS
    30. Richard Burkhauser & Mary C. Daly, 2011. "The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 7631, September.
    31. repec:fth:prinin:331 is not listed on IDEAS
    32. Qi Li & Jeffrey Scott Racine, 2006. "Nonparametric Econometrics: Theory and Practice," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 8355.
    33. Griliches, Zvi, 1977. "Estimating the Returns to Schooling: Some Econometric Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 1-22, January.
    34. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022," Reports 43539, Congressional Budget Office.
    35. Congressional Budget Office, 2016. "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2016 to 2026," Reports 51129, Congressional Budget Office.
    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. Simon Reinwald & Silvia Annen, 2023. "Influence of Gender and Prior Education Intersectionality on Further Education Investments and Job Satisfaction," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.

    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. Deniz Ozabaci & Daniel Henderson, 2015. "Additive kernel estimates of returns to schooling," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 227-251, February.
    2. Henderson, Daniel J. & Polachek, Solomon W. & Wang, Le, 2011. "Heterogeneity in schooling rates of return," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1202-1214.
    3. Daniel J. Henderson & Anne-Charlotte Souto & Le Wang, 2020. "Higher-Order Risk–Returns to Education," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-25, October.
    4. Balestra, Simone & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2017. "Heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution: Who profits the most?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 89-105.
    5. 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.
    6. Dickson, Matt & Harmon, Colm, 2011. "Economic returns to education: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and Where We Are Going—Some brief pointers," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1118-1122.
    7. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Xiaoxiao Li & Evan Totty, 2019. "Multidemsional Skills and Returns to Schooling: Evidence from an Interactive Fixed Effects Aproach and a Linked Survey-Administrative Dataset," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1316, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    8. Gensowski, Miriam, 2018. "Personality, IQ, and lifetime earnings," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 170-183.
    9. Lamichhane, Kamal & Sawada, Yasuyuki, 2013. "Disability and returns to education in a developing country," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 85-94.
    10. Daniel J. Henderson & Léopold Simar & Le Wang, 2017. "The three s of public schools: irrelevant inputs, insufficient resources and inefficiency," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(12), pages 1164-1184, March.
    11. 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.
    12. Fossen, Frank M. & Büttner, Tobias J.M., 2013. "The returns to education for opportunity entrepreneurs, necessity entrepreneurs, and paid employees," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 66-84.
    13. Eric A. Hanushek & Ludger Woessmann, 2008. "The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(3), pages 607-668, September.
    14. Torberg Falch & Sofia Sandgren Massih, 2011. "The Effect Of Education On Cognitive Ability," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 838-856, July.
    15. Daeheon Choi & Chune Young Chung & Ha Truong, 2019. "Return on Education in Two Major Vietnamese Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-30, September.
    16. Peet, Evan D. & Fink, Günther & Fawzi, Wafaie, 2015. "Returns to education in developing countries: Evidence from the living standards and measurement study surveys," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 69-90.
    17. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2015. "Return on Universal Education: SSA Case Study on Bihar," MPRA Paper 64831, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Jun 2015.
    18. Almeida, André & Figueiredo, Hugo & Cerejeira, João & Portela, Miguel & Sá, Carla & Teixeira, Pedro, 2017. "Returns to Postgraduate Education in Portugal: Holding on to a Higher Ground?," GLO Discussion Paper Series 44, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    19. Lamichhane, Kamal & Watanabe, Takayuki, 2015. "The Effect of Disability and Gender on Returns to the Investment in Education: A Case from Metro Manilla of the Philippines," Working Papers 103, JICA Research Institute.
    20. Harmon, Colm & Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2003. "Dispersion in the economic return to schooling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 205-214, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; disability; heterogeneity; risk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    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:dp10747. 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: 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.