The Effects of Spousal Education on Individual Earnings – A Study of Married Swedish Couples

Johanna Åström
Additional contact information
Johanna Åström: The Swedish Retail Institute (HUI), Postal: Regeringsgatan 60, 103 29 Stockholm, Sweden, and Department of Economics, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå,Sweden,

No 32, HUI Working Papers from HUI Research

Abstract: A positive association between spousal education and individual earnings is a common empirical finding (e.g., Benham, 1974 and Rossetti and Tanda, 2000). The two most common explanations for this are sample selection and crossproductivity effects. Can spouses really benefit from each other’s human capital in the labour market, or does the entire association stem from assortative mating? In this study, we control for time-invariant heterogeneity that may be correlated with the spouse’s education level and use a rich data set that includes observations of individuals when they are single and when they are married. The results support the cross-productivity hypothesis for both males and females. Furthermore, couples with education within the same field experience even larger effects.

Keywords: Marriage; Education; Human capital spillover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J12 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2011-07-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hui.se/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchi ... e_ForceDownload=true (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.hui.se/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchive_FileID=8520631e-169b-4857-963e-a6586388e566&MediaArchive_ForceDownload=true [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.hui.se/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchive_FileID=8520631e-169b-4857-963e-a6586388e566&MediaArchive_ForceDownload=true [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://hui.se/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchive_FileID=8520631e-169b-4857-963e-a6586388e566&MediaArchive_ForceDownload=true)

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:hhs:huiwps:0032

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HUI Working Papers from HUI Research Handelns Forskningsinstitut, c/o HUI Research, Regeringsgatan 60, 103 29 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hans Seerar Westerberg ().