Exploring Wage Determination by Education Level

Penelope B. Prime, Donald Grimes and MaryBeth Walker

Economic Development Quarterly, 2016, vol. 30, issue 3, 191-202

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explain urban wage differentials with a special focus on educational levels. The authors explore whether the share of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher in the community matters to the wages of those within specific educational cohorts, accounting for cost of living, human capital externalities, consumer externalities, policy factors, and local labor market conditions. Using data for all U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas between 2005 and 2012, the authors find that the presence of more highly educated people will result in a higher median wage in the community overall, as do many studies, but that this factor does not significantly increase the wage for any individual education cohort. These results are hidden if we only look at the entire workforce in the aggregate.

Keywords: labor; median wage; urban wage differentials; education; human capital externalities; MSA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242416628995 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:30:y:2016:i:3:p:191-202

DOI: 10.1177/0891242416628995

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development Quarterly
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().