Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling
Melvin Stephens and
Dou-Yan Yang
No 19369, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Causal estimates of the benefits of increased schooling using U.S. state schooling laws as instruments typically rely on specifications which assume common trends across states in the factors affecting different birth cohorts. Differential changes across states during this period, such as relative school quality improvements, suggest that this assumption may fail to hold. Across a number of outcomes including wages, unemployment, and divorce, we find that statistically significant causal estimates become insignificant and, in many instances, wrong-signed when allowing year of birth effects to vary across regions.
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ure
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Published as Melvin Stephens Jr. & Dou-Yan Yang, 2014. "Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1777-92, June.
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Journal Article: Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling (2014)
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