What determines the return to education: An extra year or a hurdle cleared?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYThe raising of the minimum school leaving age in England and Wales in 1973 has previously been used to estimate the economic returns to an additional year of education. However, this policy change had two effects on members of the affected cohorts: it increased their length of schooling and also increased the probability that they attained at least some academic qualifications.Another school leaving rule that was in place at the time allows us to isolate the effect of having some academic qualifications versus having none on the outcomes of individuals with the same length of schooling.This latter exercise suggests that there is a sizeable return to having academic qualifications, increasing the probability of employment by 40 percentage points. This is more than 70% of the estimated return to qualifications based on the raising of the minimum school leaving age -implying that the majority of the policy effect came through the impact on qualifications, with a smaller additional effect due to schooling length.This has implications for plans to further raise the education leaving age, suggesting that returns will be higher if students are compelled to take nationally recognised exams at the end of their final year of education. Thus raising the minimum school leaving age to 18 -when A-levels and equivalent exams are taken -should have a much greater effect on outcomes than raising the minimum leaving age to 17, an age at which traditionally there are not nationally recognised exams taken.2

Mechanisms linking high school graduation to health disparities in young adulthood: a longitudinal analysis of the role of health behaviours, psychosocial stressors, and health insurance

“…29–31 Accordingly, participants with a GED were grouped with high school dropouts for the analysis. It has been also shown that completion of a degree, rather than an additional year of schooling, is associated with improvement in health, 2,32 although this association remains debatable. 4 Because the majority of participants at the age 21 survey had not completed a postsecondary degree, and high school completion remains an important marker in an individual’s educational career and has been shown to have long-term impacts on various life outcomes, 33–35 educational attainment was operationalized as previously described.…”

Early, Late or Never? When Does Parental Education Impact Child Outcomes?

“…There is no impact on A-level qualifications (which are level 3 qualifications normally sat at age 18) or higher, which suggests that the impact of RoSLA was limited to the lower end of the education distribution, with no ripple effect further up (see Chevalier et al, 2004; for further evidence of this). 4 7 -4 8 4 8 -4 9 4 9 -5 0 5 0 -5 1 5 1 -5 2 5 2 -5 3 5 3 -5 4 5 4 -5 5 5 5 -5 6 5 6 -5 7 5 7 -5 8 5 8 -5 9 5 9 -6 0 6 0 -6 1 6 1 -6 2 6 2 -6 3 6 3 -6 4 6 4 -6 5 6 5 -6 6 6 6 -6 7 School Cohort A number of studies have exploited this exogenous increase in education to estimate the causal impact of education on inter alia wages (Harmon and Walker, 1995;Grenet, 2013), employment (Dickson and Smith, 2011), health (Silles, 2009;Clark and Royer, 2013) and crime (Machin et al, 2011). The estimated impacts of the RoSLA are substantial for wages, employment and crime, though there is mixed evidence regarding any effect on health.…”

Socio-economic differences in university outcomes in the UK: drop-out, degree completion and degree class

“…But returns to education tend to accrue via qualifications rather than years of schooling in the UK (e.g. Dickson and Smith, 2011), suggesting that differences in participation may not be the whole story: one must also consider whether -amongst the select group of individuals who go to university -there are socio-economic differences in the likelihood of going to a top university, completing a degree and graduating with a first or a 2:1.…”

“…This arises because there are substantial returns to the acquisition of qualifications (e.g. Blundell et al, 2005;Dickson and Smith, 2011) -and in particular to high grades in particular subjects studied at certain institutions (e.g. Bratti and Manchini, 2003;Chevalier, 2011Chevalier, , 2014Chevalier and Conlon, 2003;Feng and Graetz, 2013;Hussain et al, 2009;Walker and Zhu, 2011) -but large differences in the likelihood of acquiring these qualifications by socio-economic background (e.g.…”