Heterogeneous Economic Returns to Postsecondary Degrees: Evidence from Chile

Reyes, Loreto; Rodríguez, Jorge; Urzúa, Sergio

doi:10.3386/w18817

Cited by 24 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…Using a completely different approach, Reyes, Rodríguez, and Urzúa (2013) fi nd that a signifi cant proportion of college graduates (35-42 percent, depending on the degree and the institution) obtain negative net economic returns from their investments. These fi ndings-complemented with income data that show that the gap between the cost and the benefi ts of tertiary education depends on the quality of that education (World Bank 2011)-suggest that the quality of certain types of tertiary education has reduced the skill premium in Chile.…”

Section: Falling Wages Of Recent Cohorts Of College-educated Workers:mentioning

confidence: 99%

Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future

Messina¹,

Silva²

2017

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This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with external contributions. The fi ndings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily refl ect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifi cally reserved.

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Section: Falling Wages Of Recent Cohorts Of College-educated Workers:mentioning

confidence: 99%

Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future

Messina¹,

Silva²

2017

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“… de Giorgi et al (2010),Sacerdote (2001) andOyer and Schaefer (2012) also study the role of peers in career choices.6 In addition,Kaufmann et al (2013) show that increasing selectivity may also have returns through the marriage market Oyer and Schaefer (2009). and Arcidiacono et al (2008) study applicants to law and business graduate programs, respectively, and find evidence of large earnings returns Reyes et al (2016). model selection into college for Chilean students and find evidence of positive but heterogeneous returns.…”

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confidence: 99%

Elite Colleges and Upward Mobility to Top Jobs and Top Incomes

Zimmerman

2016

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This paper asks whether elite colleges help students outside of historically advantaged groups reach top positions in the economy. I combine administrative data on income and leadership teams at publicly traded firms with a regression discontinuity design based on admissions rules at elite business-focused degree programs in Chile. The 1.8% of college students admitted to these programs account for 41%of leadership positions and 39% of top 0.1% incomes. Admission raises the number of leadership positions students hold by 44% and their probability of attaining a top 0.1% income by 51%. However, these gains are driven by male applicants from high-tuition private high schools, with zero effects for female students or students from other school types with similar admissions test scores. Admissions effects are equal to 38% of the gap in rates of top attainment by gender and 54% of the gap by high school background for male students. A difference-in-differences analysis of the rates at which pairs of students lead the same firms suggests that peer ties formed between college classmates from similar backgrounds may play an important role in driving the observed effects.1 The analysis proceeds in three steps. I first present new descriptive evidence on the distribution of firm leadership and top income attainment by educational background and student characteristics. I use data on the population of college-bound high-school graduates 3 from 1980 through 2001, and focus on two measures of top attainment: holding an executive management position or board seat at a publicly traded firm, or having an income in the top 0.1% of the observed income distribution. I measure these outcomes for students who are between 12 and 39 years removed from the year of college application, or roughly ages 30 through 57. This allows time for students to complete schooling and reach their career peaks. I find that the 1.8% of students admitted to three business-focused majors at the two most selective universities in Chile (henceforth 'elite degree programs') make up 41% of all directors and top managers, 27% of the top 1% of the income distribution between 2005 and 2013, 39% of the top 0.1%, and 45% of the top 0.01%. The gap between rates of leadership attainment at these elite degree programs and the average program is roughly similar to the gap observed in the US between Ivy League graduates and the average college graduate. Conditional on selectivity, major matters: students in top business-focused programs are 16.6 times more likely to have an income within the top 0.1% of the distribution than students in equally selective medical programs, where average incomes are also high. For students at elite degree programs, gender and family background are critical determinants of top attainment. Taking attendance at a hightuition private high school as a proxy for parental SES, I find that compared to male students from other backgrounds (female students), high-SES male students hold 3.4 (6.7) times more leadership positions and are 4.2 (11.4) t...

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“…These estimations were made through matching techniques. Following Carneiro et al (2003), Hansen et al (2004) and Reyes et al (2013), we used standardized test scores (SABER-11 test) to approximate individuals' abilities. We also kept in mind the assumption proposed initially by Heckman et al (2006a) that states that at the moment the individual makes a decision about his postsecondary education, his abilities(cognitive and non-cognitive) are fixed and are known by him but not by the researcher.…”

Section: Model and Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our objective is to answer: What would have happened to individuals who hold a bachelor degree as their higher educational level had they had a different post-secondary education degree? To accomplish our goal, we adapted Reyes et al (2013) empirical strategy that proposes the inclusion of individuals' abilities in comparing the different scenarios of postsecondary education and complemented it with quasi-experimental techniques.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decisions about Postsecondary Education, their Returns in Colombia

Ospina-Londoño

Saavedra-Caballero²

2014

JEHD

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This study analyzes the economic returns to schooling decisions made by high school graduates in Colombia. We wanted to verify if the economic returns (wages) obtained by new postsecondary education graduates compensate for the economic and psychological investment they made to get that academic degree. To answer that question, we estimated these economic returns for each type of postsecondary degree available in Colombia (technical education, technological education, undergraduate studies, graduate studies) by origin of the institution (public or private). Our methodological strategy includes the generation of a micro-database that contains agents' socio-economic backgrounds and also their individual labor market outcomes. Because agents with very similar characteristics and the same schooling decisions might obtain different economic returnsfrom education, we considered as part of our empirical strategy the inclusion of an approximation of agents' cognitive abilities.

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Heterogeneous Economic Returns to Postsecondary Degrees: Evidence from Chile

Cited by 24 publications

References 18 publications

Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future

Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future

Elite Colleges and Upward Mobility to Top Jobs and Top Incomes

Decisions about Postsecondary Education, their Returns in Colombia

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