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

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.07.010

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

dc.contributor.author	Serneels, Pieter
dc.contributor.author	Beegle, Kathleen
dc.contributor.author	Dillon, Andrew
dc.date.accessioned	2018-03-01T17:33:16Z
dc.date.available	2018-03-01T17:33:16Z
dc.date.issued	2017-10
dc.description.abstract	Returns to education remain an important parameter of interest in economic analysis. A large literature estimates these returns, often carefully addressing issues such as selection into wage employment and endogeneity in terms of completed schooling. There has been much less exploration of whether the estimates of Mincerian returns depend on how information about wage work is collected. Relying on a survey experiment in Tanzania, this paper finds that estimates of the returns to education vary by questionnaire design, but not by whether the information on employment and wages is self-reported or collected by a proxy respondent. The differences derived from questionnaire type are substantial, varying from higher returns of 5 percentage points among the most well educated men to 16 percentage points among the least well educated women. These differences are at magnitudes similar to the bias in ordinary least squares estimation, which receives considerable attention in the literature. The findings demonstrate that survey design matters in the estimation of returns to schooling and that care is needed in comparing across contexts and over time, particularly if the data are generated through different surveys.	en
dc.identifier.citation	Economics of Education Review
dc.identifier.doi	10.1596/29418
dc.identifier.issn	0272-7757
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10986/29418
dc.publisher	Elsevier
dc.rights	CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO
dc.rights.holder	World Bank
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
dc.subject	RETURNS TO EDUCATION
dc.subject	SURVEY DESIGN
dc.subject	FIELD EXPERIMENT
dc.subject	DEVELOPMENT
dc.subject	TEST BIAS
dc.subject	GENDER
dc.title	Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Whom You Ask?	en
dc.type	Journal Article	en
dc.type	Article de journal	fr
dc.type	Artículo de revista	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication
okr.associatedcontent	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716303958 Journal website (version of record)	en
okr.crossref.title	Do Returns to Education Depend on How and Whom You Ask?
okr.date.disclosure	2019-07-21
okr.doctype	Publications & Research::Journal Article
okr.doctype	Publications & Research
okr.externalcontent	External Content
okr.identifier.doi	10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.07.010
okr.identifier.doi	10.1596/29418
okr.identifier.report	125341
okr.journal.nbpages	5-19
okr.language.supported	en
okr.peerreview	Academic Peer Review
okr.region.administrative	Africa
okr.region.country	Tanzania
okr.topic	Education::Economics of Education
okr.topic	Education::Educational Sciences
okr.topic	Social Protections and Labor::Skills Development and Labor Force Training
okr.topic	Social Protections and Labor::Wages, Compensation & Benefits
okr.unit	AFCW1
okr.volume	60
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relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	96210c0d-5b86-5feb-93d2-1f3d7a36da17