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Title: Effects of Ability and Family Background on Non-Monetary Returns to Education
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Elias, Julio Jorge |
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Effects of Ability and Family Background on Non-Monetary Returns to Education Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2005. DAI-A 66/06, p. 2331, Dec 2005 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Continuing Education; Crime; Education, Adult; Educational Returns; Family Background and Culture; Heterogeneity; Labor Economics Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This thesis investigates how individual characteristics, such as ability and family background, affect non-monetary returns to education. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I find that the effect of education on general health and criminal behavior is much larger for people with low ability and those with a relatively disadvantaged family background. A simple extended version of Card's (1995) formulation of Becker's (1967) model of optimal schooling is presented and used to analyze the main implications of these results for investment in education. In light of the evidence on the positive relationship between monetary returns to education and both individuals' ability and environmental factors, my estimates suggest that for less able people non-monetary gains are a major component of the total return to education. From a social point of view, since the reductions in criminal behavior are larger among less able people, these results cast some doubt on policy proposals which, for efficiency, advocate investing more in the more able. This thesis also shows that the ability bias in least square estimates of the return to schooling may be attenuated or even reversed once heterogeneity in non-monetary returns to schooling is incorporated into the analysis. |
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Bibliography Citation
Elias, Julio Jorge. Effects of Ability and Family Background on Non-Monetary Returns to Education. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2005. DAI-A 66/06, p. 2331, Dec 2005. |