Suchergebnisse

The return on educational investments has risen substantially in the past 30 years. While the primary focus has been on the college wage premium, new evidence shows that the value of going to college is affected by a host of other important educational decisions, each of which has a potential large effect on future earnings. This Commentary examines the impact of two of these other decisions on earnings: the choice of a college major and the pursuit of an advanced degree. In some cases, differences in the college major premium are as large as the college wage premium itself.

In this study, we explore wage dynamics of STEM and nonSTEM professionals during their working life. We analyze wage differences along the wage distribution and with labor market experience. The main novelty in the paper is decomposing the wage growth in separate effects of experience, cohort and time, and accounting for potential depreciation. The identification used in this procedure is based on the ideas of the human capital theory. The empirical realization employs data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. It shows that Russian STEM graduates accumulate human capital at a slower rate than nonSTEM graduates do. However, STEM skills acquired by the beginning of the career are less exposed to obsoleteness than nonSTEM. This reflects a stronger cohort effect for the latter group, and is an implication of the systemic change and the transformational recession during the 1990s

Despite post‐college degree holders now making up nearly 15% of the US adult workforce, studies of their labour market performance remain sparse. This is surprising given that they are the most educated group in the labour force and as, over time, they have done significantly better than all other education groups. We show a significant rise over time in the postgraduate wage premium, reflecting an increased relative demand due to their superior skill sets and occupational status. The increase in the demand for postgraduates is a key factor behind rising wage inequality within the increasingly heterogeneous college graduate workforce.