The Link Between Education and Income

Paper Summary:

The paper examines Goldin and Katz's paper entitled, "Education and Income in the Early Twentieth Century: Evidence from the Prairies" that investigated the impact education has played regarding the returns to schooling in early 20th century America. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments presented in the paper. The paper concludes that the authors' exclusion of key variables greatly affected the validity of the paper.

From the Paper:

"Prior to Goldin and Katz's (G&K) paper entitled, 'Education and Income in the Early Twentieth Century: Evidence from the Prairies', economic historians had investigated the impact education has played regarding the returns to schooling in early 20th century America. Examining a basic schooling/income frameworks developed by Mincer (1974), lnwi = a + BSi + ei, where wi represents the log of earnings of individual i, Si as the number of years of schooling, ei as a statistical error term, where a and B are parameters to be estimated, we can construe that changes in an individual's level of schooling can have an observable effect upon to their level of earnings. As schooling (Si) increases, wages (wi) should increase as well."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Orley Ashenfelter, Colm Harmon and Hessel Oosterbeek. A Review of Estimates of the Schooling/Earnings Relationship, With Tests for Pulication Bias. Pg 3.
• Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence Katz. Education and Income in the Early 20th Century: Evidence from the Prairies. Pg 794.
• Non-Farm occupations included those jobs pertaining to blue and white-collar work.
• Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence Katz. Education and Income in the Early 20th Century: Evidence from the Prairies. Pg 783.
• Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence Katz. The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity. Pg 13.

More papers on The Link Between Education and Income:

• Essay # 38043 : "The Link Between Income and Education"
• Essay # 86594 : "Lung Cancer and Middle-Aged Men"
• Research Paper # 148915 : "Corruption and Policy Implications"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: