IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucscec/qt8zm571cw.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Schooling and the AFQT: Evidence from School Entry Laws

Author

Listed:
  • Cascio, Elizabeth U.

Abstract

Is the AFQT a measure of achievement or innate ability? In this paper, we test for a relationship between schooling and AFQT performance in the NLSY 79 by comparing test-takers with birthdays near state cutoff dates for school entry. We instrument for schooling at the test date with “academic cohort”—the year in which an individual should have entered first grade given her birthday and the state in which she was likely to have entered school—in a model which allows age at the test date to have a direct effect on AFQT performance. This identification strategy reveals large impacts of schooling on the AFQT performance of blacks and Hispanics, but no schooling effect for whites. Within race, schooling is generally found to have larger impacts on the more academic components of the underlying test battery. On balance, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that the AFQT measures school achievement.

Suggested Citation

  • Cascio, Elizabeth U., 2004. "Schooling and the AFQT: Evidence from School Entry Laws," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt8zm571cw, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt8zm571cw
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8zm571cw.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Keueger, 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 979-1014.
    2. Hansen, Karsten T. & Heckman, James J. & Mullen, K.J.Kathleen J., 2004. "The effect of schooling and ability on achievement test scores," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 39-98.
    3. Roland G. Fryer & Steven D. Levitt, 2004. "Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 447-464, May.
    4. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    5. Blackburn, McKinley L & Neumark, David, 1993. "Omitted-Ability Bias and the Increase in the Return to Schooling," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(3), pages 521-544, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rashmi Barua & Kevin Lang, 2009. "School Entry, Educational Attainment and Quarter of Birth: A Cautionary Tale of LATE," NBER Working Papers 15236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nikolov, Plamen & Jimi, Nusrat & Chang, Jerray, 2020. "The Importance of Cognitive Domains and the Returns to Schooling in South Africa: Evidence from Two Labor Surveys," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    2. Torberg Falch & Sofia Sandgren Massih, 2011. "The Effect Of Education On Cognitive Ability," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 838-856, July.
    3. Cascio, Elizabeth U., 2004. "Schooling and the AFQT: Evidence from School Entry Laws," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt8zm571cw, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    4. Mirjam van Praag & Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Justin van der Sluis, 2009. "Returns for Entrepreneurs versus Employees: The Effect of Education and Personal Control on the Relative Performance of Entrepreneurs vis-a-vis Wage Employees," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-111/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Mirjam Praag & Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Justin van der Sluis, 2013. "The higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 375-396, February.
    6. Nordin, Martin & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2007. "The Income Gap Between Natives and Second Generation Immigrants in Sweden: Is Skill the Explanation?," IZA Discussion Papers 2759, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Juanna Schrøter Joensen & Helena Skyt Nielsen, 2009. "Is there a Causal Effect of High School Math on Labor Market Outcomes?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(1).
    8. Charles F. Manski & John V. Pepper, 2000. "Monotone Instrumental Variables, with an Application to the Returns to Schooling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 997-1012, July.
    9. van Praag, Mirjam C. & van Witteloostuijn, Arjen & van der Sluis, Justin, 2009. "Returns for Entrepreneurs vs. Employees: The Effect of Education and Personal Control on the Relative Performance of Entrepreneurs vs. Wage Employees," IZA Discussion Papers 4628, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Belzil, Christian & Hansen, Jorgen, 2007. "A structural analysis of the correlated random coefficient wage regression model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 827-848, October.
    11. Martin Nordin & Dan-Olof Rooth, 2014. "Increasing Returns to Schooling by Ability? A Comparison between the USA and Sweden," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82, pages 1-20, December.
    12. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J & Masterov, Dimitriy V, 2005. "Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 1-39, April.
    13. Kai Barron & Luis F. Gamboa & Paul Rodríguez-Lesmes, 2019. "Behavioural Response to a Sudden Health Risk: Dengue and Educational Outcomes in Colombia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 620-644, April.
    14. Ge, Suqin, 2013. "Estimating the returns to schooling: Implications from a dynamic discrete choice model," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 92-105.
    15. Schultz, T. Paul, 2010. "Population and Health Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4785-4881, Elsevier.
    16. Gabin Langevin & David Masclet & Fabien Moizeau & Emmanuel Peterle, 2017. "Ethnic gaps in educational attainment and labor-market outcomes: evidence from France," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 84-111, January.
    17. Yiming He & Thomas M. Fullerton, 2020. "The economic analysis of instrument variables estimation in dynamic optimal models with an application to the water consumption," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 66(9), pages 413-423.
    18. Leuven, Edwin & Lindahl, Mikael & Oosterbeek, Hessel & Webbink, Dinand, 2010. "Expanding schooling opportunities for 4-year-olds," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 319-328, June.
    19. Thomas Lemieux, 2014. "Occupations, fields of study and returns to education," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1047-1077, November.
    20. Yukun Ma, 2023. "Identification-robust inference for the LATE with high-dimensional covariates," Papers 2302.09756, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt8zm571cw. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecucsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.