Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/219327 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
DICE Discussion Paper No. 341
Publisher: 
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), Düsseldorf
Abstract: 
In this paper, we identify female long-term wage returns to college education using the educational expansion between 1960-1990 inWest Germany as exogenous variation for college enrollment. We estimate marginal treatment effects to learn about the underlying behavioral structure of women who decide for or against going to college (e.g., whether there is selection into gains). We propose a simple partial identification technique using an adjusted version of the Lee bounds to account for women who select into employment due to having a college education, which we call college-induced selection into employment (CISE). We find that women are, on average, more than 17 percentage points more likely to be employed due to having a college education than without. Taking this CISE into account, we find wage returns of 6-12 percent per year of education completed (average treatment effects on the treated).
Subjects: 
Marginal treatment effect
Partial identification
Returns to higher education
Female labor force participation
JEL: 
C31
I26
J24
ISBN: 
978-3-86304-340-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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