Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Who You Ask?

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-7747

Publication:
Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Who You Ask?

dc.contributor.author	Serneels, Pieter
dc.contributor.author	Beegle, Kathleen
dc.contributor.author	Dillon, Andrew
dc.date.accessioned	2016-08-09T16:44:49Z
dc.date.available	2016-08-09T16:44:49Z
dc.date.issued	2016-07
dc.description.abstract	Returns to education remain an important parameter of interest in economic analysis. A large literature estimates returns to education in the labor market, often carefully addressing issues such as selection, into wage employment and in terms of completed schooling. There has been much less exploration of whether estimated returns are robust to survey design. Specifically, do returns to education differ depending on how information about wage work is collected? Using a survey experiment in Tanzania, this paper investigates whether survey methods matter for estimating mincerian returns to education. The results show that estimated returns vary by questionnaire design, but not by whether the information on employment and wages is self-reported or collected by a proxy respondent (another household member). The differences due to questionnaire type are substantial varying from 6 percentage points higher returns to education for the highest educated men, to 14 percentage points higher for the least educated women, after allowing for non-linearity and endogeneity in the estimation of these parameters. These differences are of similar magnitudes as the bias in OLS estimation, which receives considerable attention in the literature. The findings underline that survey design matters for the estimation of structural parameters, and that care is needed when comparing across contexts and over time, in particular when data is generated by different surveys.	en
dc.identifier	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26579299/returns-education-depend-ask
dc.identifier.doi	10.1596/1813-9450-7747
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10986/24827
dc.language	English
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7747
dc.rights	CC BY 3.0 IGO
dc.rights.holder	World Bank
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/
dc.subject	returns to education
dc.subject	survey design
dc.subject	field experiment
dc.subject	development
dc.title	Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Who You Ask?	en
dc.type	Working Paper	en
dc.type	Document de travail	fr
dc.type	Documento de trabajo	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication
okr.crossref.title	Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Who You Ask?
okr.date.disclosure	2016-07-18
okr.doctype	Publications & Research
okr.doctype	Publications & Research::Policy Research Working Paper
okr.docurl	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26579299/returns-education-depend-ask
okr.guid	156941468868453090
okr.identifier.doi	10.1596/1813-9450-7747
okr.identifier.externaldocumentum	090224b084468a44_1_0
okr.identifier.internaldocumentum	26579299
okr.identifier.report	WPS7747
okr.imported	true
okr.language.supported	en
okr.pdfurl	http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2016/07/18/090224b084468a44/1_0/Rendered/PDF/Do0returns0to00ow0and0who0you0ask00.pdf	en
okr.region.administrative	Africa
okr.region.country	Tanzania
okr.topic	Education::Education Indicators and Statistics
okr.topic	Macroeconomics and Economic Growth::Economic Theory & Research
okr.unit	Human Development Global Practice Group
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