Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223824 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13382
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In this paper, we identify female long-term wage returns to college education using the educational expansion between 1960â€"1990 in West 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 6â€"12 percent per year of education completed (average treatment effects on the treated).
Subjects: 
returns to higher education
partial identification
marginal treatment effect
female labor force participation
JEL: 
C31
I26
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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