The Changing Benefits of Early Work Experience

Charles Baum and Christopher Ruhm

No 20413, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine whether the benefits of high school work experience have changed over the last 20 years by comparing effects for the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Our main specifications suggest that the future wage benefits of working 20 hours per week in the senior year of high school have fallen from 8.3 percent for the earlier cohort, measured in 1987-1989, to 4.4 percent for the later one, in 2008-2010. Moreover, the gains of work are largely restricted to women and have diminished over time for them. We are able to explain about five-eighths of the differential between cohorts, with most of this being attributed to the way that high school employment is related to subsequent adult work experience and occupational attainment.

JEL-codes: J22 J38 J4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-lma
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Published as Charles L. Baum & Christopher J. Ruhm, 2016. "The Changing Benefits of Early Work Experience," Southern Economic Journal, .

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Working Paper: The Changing Benefits of Early Work Experience (2014)
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