This paper presents economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on skill formation. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next...

The theoretical, conceptual, and practical difficulties with the use of cross-national data on schooling are so severe using aggregate data for any purpose for which individual level data would do should be avoided. There are, however, three questions for which the use of cross-national data on...

This chapter explores the effects of education on nonmarket outcomes from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Examples of outcomes considered include general consumption patterns at a moment in time, savings and the rate of growth of consumption over time, own (adult) health and inputs...

All data sources indicate that blackwhite skill gaps diminished over most of the 20th century, but blackwhite skill gaps as measured by test scores among youth and educational attainment among young adults have remained constant or increased in absolute value since the late 1980s. I examine the...

We review and extend the empirical literature that seeks evidence of a wedge between the private and social returns to human capital, specifically education. This literature has two main strands. First, much of modern growth theory puts human capital at center-stage, building on older notions of...

Numerous studies regress log earnings on schooling and report estimated coefficients as Mincer rates of return. A more recent literature uses instrumental variables. This chapter considers the economic interpretation of these analyses and how the availability of repeated cross section and panel...

This chapter discusses the large literature and numerous issues regarding education-related differences in income in the U.S. Early analyses of skill-related differences compared the earnings of workers across occupations. The general consensus of these investigations was that skill premiums...

This chapter analyzes the international evidence on the relationship between educational wage premia and the distribution of personal labor earnings. The aim is to review what is known about the contribution of differences in relative wages across schooling levels to the degree of variability,...

This chapter deals with several salient issues about immigrants to the US and their education. These issues include a comparison of the schooling accomplishments of immigrants compared to the native-born both contemporaneously as well as over time. These comparisons emphasize the considerable...

In this chapter we present an overview of the history of racial differences in schooling in the United States. We present basic data on literacy, school attendance, educational attainment, various measures of school quality, and the returns to schooling. Then, in the context of a simple model of...