Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/34871 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3305
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Do students benefit from compulsory schooling? Researchers using changes in compulsory schooling laws as instruments have typically estimated very high returns to additional schooling that are greater than the corresponding OLS estimates and concluded that the group of individuals who are influenced by the law change have particularly high returns to education. That is, the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) is larger than the average treatment effect (ATE). However, studies of a 1947 British compulsory schooling law change that impacted about half the relevant population have also found very high instrumental variables returns to schooling (about 15%), suggesting that the ATE of schooling is also very high and higher than OLS estimates suggest. We utilize the New Earnings Survey Panel Data-set (NESPD), that has superior earnings information compared to the datasets previously used and find instrumental variable estimates that are small and much lower than OLS. In fact, there is no evidence of any positive return for women and the return for men is in the 4-7% range. These estimates provide no evidence that the ATE of schooling is very high.
Subjects: 
Compulsory schooling
return to education
JEL: 
J01
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
133.16 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.