 Estimating the education-earnings equation using geographic variationWilliam R. Doyle and Benjamin T. Skinner Economics of Education Review, 2016, vol. 53, issue C, 254-267 Abstract: We expand on the literature on the causal impact of postsecondary education on earnings by introducing a richer set of location-based measures as instruments for years of education. Utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997, we implement six different sets of instruments based on geographic variation: presence of a four-year or two-year college in the county, inverse log distance to in-state two-year colleges, distance-weighted tuition and distance-weighted enrollment at in-state two-year colleges, and inverse log distance to all colleges. We find that these alternative measures yield differing estimates of the impact of educational attainment on earnings. Using our preferred measure of geographic variation, one additional year of postsecondary attainment results in a 9.7% increase in yearly earnings. We find a larger impact of postsecondary attainment for women, and no measurable impact of postsecondary attainment for men. Keywords: Postsecondary education; Economic returns; Geospatial variation; Instrumental variables; Community college; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:53:y:2016:i:c:p:254-267 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.03.010 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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