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Author: Breen, Richard
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Breen, Richard
Choi, Seongsoo
Holm, Anders
Heterogeneous Causal Effects and Sample Selection Bias
Sociological Science published online (8 July 2015): DOI: 10.15195/v2.a17.
Also: https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-v2-17-351/
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sociological Science
Keyword(s): College Degree; Educational Returns; Heterogeneity; Selectivity Bias/Selection Bias

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The role of education in the process of socioeconomic attainment is a topic of long standing interest to sociologists and economists. Recently there has been growing interest not only in estimating the average causal effect of education on outcomes such as earnings, but also in estimating how causal effects might vary over individuals or groups. In this paper we point out one of the under-appreciated hazards of seeking to estimate heterogeneous causal effects: conventional selection bias (that is, selection on baseline differences) can easily be mistaken for heterogeneity of causal effects. This might lead us to find heterogeneous effects when the true effect is homogenous, or to wrongly estimate not only the magnitude but also the sign of heterogeneous effects. We apply a test for the robustness of heterogeneous causal effects in the face of varying degrees and patterns of selection bias, and we illustrate our arguments and our method using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data.
Bibliography Citation
Breen, Richard, Seongsoo Choi and Anders Holm. "Heterogeneous Causal Effects and Sample Selection Bias." Sociological Science published online (8 July 2015): DOI: 10.15195/v2.a17.
2. Breen, Richard
Chung, Inkwan
Income Inequality and Education
Sociological Science 2 (August 2015): 454-477.
Also: https://www.sociologicalscience.com/download/volume-2/august/SocSci_v2_454to477.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Sociological Science
Keyword(s): Earnings; Educational Attainment; Income Distribution; Wage Gap

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Many commentators have seen the growing gap in earnings and income between those with a college education and those without as a major cause of increasing inequality in the United States and elsewhere. In this article we investigate the extent to which increasing the educational attainment of the US population might ameliorate inequality. We use data from NLSY79 and carry out a three-level decomposition of total inequality into within-person, between-person and between education parts. We find that the between-education contribution to inequality is small, even when we consider only adjusted inequality that omits the within-person component. We carry out a number of simulations to gauge the likely impact on inequality of changes in the distribution of education and of a narrowing of the differences in average incomes between those with different levels of education. We find that any feasible educational policy is likely to have only a minor impact on income inequality.
Bibliography Citation
Breen, Richard and Inkwan Chung. "Income Inequality and Education." Sociological Science 2 (August 2015): 454-477.