Human Capital Versus Signaling Models: University Access and High School Drop-outs

Kelly Bedard ()

Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: Under the educational sorting hypothesis, an environment in which some individuals are constrained from entering university will be characterized by increased pooling at the high school graduation level, as compared to an environment with greater university access. This results because some potential high school drop-outs and university enrollees choose the high school graduate designation in order to take advantage of high ability individuals who are constrained from entering university. This is in stark contrast to human capital theory which predicts higher university enrollment, but identical high school drop-out rates in regions with greater university access. Using NLSYM and NLSYW education data from the late 1960s and early 1970s, I find that labor markets that contain a university have higher high school drop-out rates.

Pages: 35 pages
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp19.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp19.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp19.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:mcm:cilnwp:19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers from McMaster University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().