Returns to Education: Evidence from UK Twins
U of London Queen Mary Economics Working Paper No. 453
23 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2002
There are 2 versions of this paper
Returns to Education: Evidence from UK Twins
Date Written: February 2002
Abstract
We use a new sample of UK female identical twins to estimate private economic returns to education. We report findings in three areas. First, we use identical twins, to control for family effects and genetic ability bias, and the education reported by the other twin to control for schooling measurement error. Our estimates suggest a return to schooling for UK females of about 7.7%. Second, we investigate within-twin pair ability differences by examining within-twin pair and between-family correlations of education with observable correlates of ability (including birthweight, ability tests and reading scores). Our findings suggest lower ability bias in within-twin pair regressions than pooled regressions. Third, using data on twins smoking we show smoking reflects family background and using it as an instrument exacerbates ability bias.
JEL Classification: I21, J24, J31
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Estimates of the Returns to Schooling from Sibling Data: Fathers, Sons and Brothers
-
Biases in Twin Estimates of the Return to Schooling: A Note on Recent Research
-
Returns to Education: Evidence from UK Twins
By Dorothe Bonjour, Lynn Cherkas, ...
-
By Tracy Regan and Ronald L. Oaxaca
-
As Low Birth Weight Babies Grow, Can 'Good' Parents Buffer this Adverse Factor? a Research Note
By Ming-jen Lin, Jin‐tan Liu, ...
-
A Human Capital Model of the Effects of Abilities and Family Background on Optimal Schooling Levels
By Tracy Regan, Galen Burghardt, ...
-
The Co-Twin Methodology and Returns to Schooling - Testing a Critical Assumption
By Örjan Sandewall, David Cesarini, ...
-
By Rachel Berner Shalem, Francesca Cornaglia, ...