IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17939.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Raising School Quality on Earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Patrinos, Harry Anthony

    (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville)

  • Psacharopoulos, George

    (Georgetown University)

Abstract

The evidence underscores the need to shift attention from school attainment to actual learning. While the average global return to an additional year of schooling is about 10 percent, a one standard deviation increase in test scores raises earnings by 15 percent. Studies show that including direct measures of skills reduces the estimated return to schooling, revealing the stronger role of quality. These findings suggest that education policy should prioritize learning outcomes, not just years in school, to more accurately reflect the economic value of education.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrinos, Harry Anthony & Psacharopoulos, George, 2025. "The Effect of Raising School Quality on Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 17939, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17939
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17939.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cognitive skills; returns to education; earnings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    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:dp17939. 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.