Doing Less with More: Cohorts, Education, and Civic Participation in America

Abstract

, the UNC Culture and Politics Workshop, and five anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Additionally, I would like to thank Y. Claire Yang for feedback on my preliminary analyses.

Relative Education and the Advantage of a College Degree

“…To test the relative education and skill-biased technological change hypotheses, I report three sets of independent variables: variables for cohort-level educational attainment, individual-level educational attainment, and an interaction between the two to show how the returns to education change as educational attainment increases across cohorts. I calculate cohort-specific relative education within region and time period (see also Goldin and Katz 2008; Horowitz 2015; Tenn 2005). To reflect different levels of education across the country, I calculate the proportion of individuals with a four-year degree by subdividing the sample into the nine different census regions, subdividing each region by five-year periods, and then calculating the number of individuals with a four-year degree for five-year birth cohorts.…”

“…To reflect different levels of education across the country, I calculate the proportion of individuals with a four-year degree by subdividing the sample into the nine different census regions, subdividing each region by five-year periods, and then calculating the number of individuals with a four-year degree for five-year birth cohorts. This approach captures competition more accurately than would an overall measure of period-based educational attainment, because people are generally in competition with others who are a few years older or younger in a specific labor market (Easterlin 1987; Freeman 1976; Horowitz 2015; Pampel and Peters 1995). All control variables are included in all models.…”

Relative Education and the Advantage of a College Degree

“…for example, there is increasing evidence that the civic returns to education have dropped as more individuals earn college degrees (Campbell 2009;Horowitz 2015;Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry 1996). However, because education leads to less complex jobs but results in more money, the social returns to education could vary substantially by outcome.…”

“…To test the relative education and skill-biased technological change hypotheses, I report three sets of independent variables: Variables for cohort-level educational attainment, individuallevel educational attainment, and an interaction between the two to show how the returns to education change as educational attainment increases across cohorts. I calculate cohort-specific relative education within region and time period (see also: Goldin and Katz 2008;Horowitz 2015;Tenn 2005). To reflect different levels of education across the country, I calculate the proportion of individuals with a 4-year degree by subdividing the sample into the nine different census regions, subdividing each region by five-year periods, and then calculating the number of individuals with a 4-year degree for five-year birth cohorts.…”

“…To reflect different levels of education across the country, I calculate the proportion of individuals with a 4-year degree by subdividing the sample into the nine different census regions, subdividing each region by five-year periods, and then calculating the number of individuals with a 4-year degree for five-year birth cohorts. This approach captures competition more accurately than an overall measure of period-based educational attainment, since people are generally in competition with people who are a few years older or younger in a specific labor market (Easterlin 1987;Freeman 1976;Horowitz 2015;Pampel and Peters 1995). All control variables are included in all models.…”