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Returning to returns: revisiting the British education evidence

Peter Dolton and Matteo Sandi


We revisit the question of what is the rate of return to education in Great Britain. We make two contributions. Firstly, we re-assess the robustness of Harmon and Walker (1995), Oreopoulos (2006) and Devereux and Hart (2010) to equation specification and estimation method. Secondly, we generalize the previous IV approaches by using the month of birth in the calculation of a more accurate IV exploiting the 1947, 1963 and 1972 UK School Leaving Age reforms. Our results highlight the importance of equation specification and they provide a robust case for a 6% Rate of Return to Education for men. ? 2017 Elsevier B.V.


1 October 2017


Labour Economics 48, pp.87-104, 2017


DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2017.07.001

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927537116301415?via%3Dihub

This Journal article is published under the centre's Community Wellbeing programme, Education programme.