IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7249.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen V. Cameron
  • James J. Heckman

Abstract

This paper estimates a dynamic model of schooling attainment to investigate the sources of discrepancy by race and ethnicity in college attendance. When the returns to college education rose, college enrollment of whites responded much more quickly than that of minorities. Parental income is a strong predictor of this response. However, using NLSY data, we find that it is the long-run factors associated with parental background and income and not short-term credit constraints facing college students that account for the differential response by race and ethnicity to the new labor market for skilled labor. Policies aimed at improving these long-term factors are far more likely to be successful in eliminating college attendance differentials than are short-term tuition reduction policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen V. Cameron & James J. Heckman, 1999. "The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites," NBER Working Papers 7249, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7249
    Note: LS CH PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7249.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Willis, Robert J & Rosen, Sherwin, 1979. "Education and Self-Selection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 7-36, October.
    2. David Card, 1994. "Earnings, Schooling, and Ability Revisited," Working Papers 710, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. Cameron, Stephen V & Heckman, James J, 1993. "The Nonequivalence of High School Equivalents," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 1-47, January.
    4. Lazear, Edward P, 1977. "Education: Consumption or Production?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 569-597, June.
    5. Taubman, Paul, 1989. "Role of Parental Income in Educational Attainment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 57-61, May.
    6. Heckman, James J & Walker, James R, 1990. "The Relationship between Wages and Income and the Timing and Spacing of Births: Evidence from Swedish Longitudinal Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1411-1441, November.
    7. Clotfelter, Charles T. & Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Getz, Malcolm & Siegfried, John J., 1992. "Economic Challenges in Higher Education," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226110509, December.
    8. Arulampalam, W. & Robin A. Naylor & Jeremy P. Smith, 2002. "University of Warwick," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 9, Royal Economic Society.
    9. Robert M. Hauser, 1993. "Trends in College Entry among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics," NBER Chapters, in: Studies of Supply and Demand in Higher Education, pages 61-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. McPherson, Michael S & Schapiro, Morton Owen, 1991. "Does Student Aid Affect College Enrollment? New Evidence on a Persistent Controversy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 309-318, March.
    11. Heckman, James & Singer, Burton, 1984. "A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 271-320, March.
    12. Thomas J. Kane, 1995. "Rising Public College Tuition and College Entry: How Well Do Public Subsidies Promote Access to College?," NBER Working Papers 5164, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Charles T. Clotfelter & Michael Rothschild, 1993. "Studies of Supply and Demand in Higher Education," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number clot93-1, May.
    14. Lisa M. Lynch, 1994. "Training and the Private Sector: International Comparisons," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lync94-1, May.
    15. Heckman, James J, 1995. "Lessons from the Bell Curve," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 1091-1120, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. James Heckman, 2011. "Policies to foster human capital," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 3, pages 73-137.
    2. Regan, Tracy L. & Burghardt, Galen & Oaxaca, Ronald L., 2006. "A Human Capital Model of the Effects of Abilities and Family Background on Optimal Schooling Levels," IZA Discussion Papers 1927, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Pedro Carneiro & James J. Heckman, 2002. "The Evidence on Credit Constraints in Post--secondary Schooling," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 705-734, October.
    4. Stacey Chen, 2001. "Is Investing in College Education Risky?," Discussion Papers 01-09, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    5. Tracy L. Regan & Ronald L. Oaxaca & Galen Burghardt, 2007. "A Human Capital Model Of The Effects Of Ability And Family Background On Optimal Schooling Levels," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(4), pages 721-738, October.
    6. Sawada, Yasayuki & Lokshin, Michael, 2001. "Household schooling decisions in rural Pakistan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2541, The World Bank.
    7. Semjén, András, 2012. "A tandíj közgazdaságtana [The economics of tuition fees]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 31-62.
    8. Sawada, Yasuyuki & Lokshin, Michael, 2009. "Obstacles to school progression in rural Pakistan: An analysis of gender and sibling rivalry using field survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 335-347, March.
    9. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J., 2003. "Human Capital Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Todd R. Stinebrickner & Ralph Stinebrickner, 2000. "The Relationship Between Family Income and Schooling Attainment: Evidence from a Liberal Arts College with a Full Tuition Subsidy Program," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 20008, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    11. Curs, Bradley & Singell, Larry Jr., 2002. "An analysis of the application and enrollment processes for in-state and out-of-state students at a large public university," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 111-124, April.
    12. John Cawley & James Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 1998. "Meritocracy in America: An Examination of Wages Within and Across Occupations," NBER Working Papers 6446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Bas Jacobs, 2002. "An investigation of education finance reform; graduate taxes and income contingent loans in the Netherlands," CPB Discussion Paper 9.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    14. Moshe Buchinsky & Phillip Leslie, 2010. "Educational Attainment and the Changing U.S. Wage Structure: Dynamic Implications on Young Individuals' Choices," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(3), pages 541-594, July.
    15. Christian Belzil, 2008. "Testing the Specification of the Mincer Wage Equation," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 91-92, pages 427-451.
    16. Dur, Robert & Glazer, Amihai, 2008. "Subsidizing Enjoyable Education," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 1023-1039, October.
    17. Sean Nicholson, 2005. "How Much Do Medical Students Know About Physician Income?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    18. Brian Jacob & Brian McCall & Kevin Stange, 2018. "College as Country Club: Do Colleges Cater to Students’ Preferences for Consumption?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(2), pages 309-348.
    19. Jurajda, Stepan, 2002. "Estimating the effect of unemployment insurance compensation on the labor market histories of displaced workers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 227-252, June.
    20. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 1996. "Labor Market Effects of School Quality: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 5450, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    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:nbr:nberwo:7249. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.