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Title: Heterogeneity and Risk in the Return to Higher Education: Change over Time
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Remler, Dahlia
Marcotte, Dave
Cortez, Carmen
Heterogeneity and Risk in the Return to Higher Education: Change over Time
Presented: Albuquerque NM, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2014
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM)
Keyword(s): Earnings; Educational Returns; Heterogeneity

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The current policy debate largely focuses on mean earnings differences between educational groups. We enrich this debate by emphasizing the full distribution of earnings, particularly at the top and bottom. Our broad research questions are: How variable are returns to higher education? Can risk be substantially reduced through type of degree or institution? Is risk larger for students of some backgrounds? Have these returns, risks and their determinants changed between the 1980s-90s and the 2000s?

(Without exogenous variation, we cannot estimate unbiased causal returns to education. However, the NLSY's rich controls remove much of the omitted variables bias. More importantly, our analysis directly addresses the current form of much policy debate, focused on crude comparisons of means, rather than true causal effects.)

We use the NLSY79 and NLSY97 surveys and focus on earnings.

Bibliography Citation
Remler, Dahlia, Dave Marcotte and Carmen Cortez. "Heterogeneity and Risk in the Return to Higher Education: Change over Time." Presented: Albuquerque NM, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Annual Fall Research Conference, November 2014.