Return to College Education Revisited: Is Relevance Relevant?
46 Pages Posted: 15 Oct 2010
Date Written: October 14, 2010
Abstract
This study examines whether the size of the college earnings premium varies depending on the quality of the match between an individual’s degree field and his/her occupation. The study uses the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to obtain a new measure of the quality of occupational match for a sample of 2,268 young adults with post-secondary degrees from the restricted use High School and Beyond (1980/92) data. The study finds that people whose occupations better match their degree fields earn significantly higher returns to post-secondary schooling. This result is robust to controlling for an extensive set of pre-existing differences among individuals, and to accounting for differences in earnings across post-secondary degree fields.
Keywords: return to schooling, occupational match quality
JEL Classification: J24
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Estimates of the Economic Return to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins
By Orley Ashenfelter and Alan B. Krueger
-
Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?
By Alan B. Krueger and Mikael Lindahl
-
Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?
By Alan B. Krueger and Mikael Lindahl
-
By Esther Duflo
-
By Esther Duflo
-
Income, Schooling, and Ability: Evidence from a New Sample of Identical Twins
-
Using Geographic Variation in College Proximity to Estimate the Return to Schooling
By David Card