The Labour Market Returns to Graduation: Reconciling Administrative and Survey Data Estimates

Anna Adamecz-Völgyi, Matt Dickson and Nikki Shure ()
Additional contact information
Nikki Shure: University College London

No 16800, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on the earnings returns to university graduation. Recent evidence using administrative earnings data from England suggests a zero return to graduation for men and positive returns to graduation for women in annual earnings at age 26. We show that once hours worked are taken into account - typically not available in administrative tax data - returns to graduation are zero for women too. Graduate women work more hours than comparable non-graduate women, explaining their annual earnings return, but in terms of hourly wages, average returns to graduation at this early career stage are around zero for both sexes. This highlights the importance of using both survey and administrative data sources when estimating the returns to university graduation.

Keywords: returns to graduation; university; gender differences; survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2024-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16800.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp16800

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().