TY  - JOUR
AU  - Oreopoulos,Philip
AU  - Salvanes,Kjell G.
TI  - How large are returns to schooling? Hint: Money isn't everything
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15339
PY  - 2009
Y2  - September 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15339
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15339.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip Oreopoulos
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, ON  M5S 3G7
Canada
E-Mail: philip.oreopoulos@utoronto.ca

Kjell Salvanes
Department of Economics
Norwegian School of Economics
Hellev. 30, N-5035 Bergen
Norway
E-Mail: kjell.salvanes@nhh.no
AB  - This paper explores the many avenues by which schooling affects lifetime well-being. Experiences and skills acquired in school reverberate throughout life, not just through higher earnings.  Schooling also affects the degree one enjoys work and the likelihood of being unemployed.  It leads individuals to make better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting.  It also improves patience, making individuals more goal-oriented and less likely to engage in risky behavior.  Schooling improves trust and social interaction, and may offer substantial consumption value to some students.  We discuss various mechanisms to explain how these relationships may occur independent of wealth effects, and present evidence that non-pecuniary returns to schooling are at least as large as pecuniary ones. Ironically, one explanation why some early school leavers miss out on these high returns is that they lack the very same decision making skills that more schooling would help improve.
ER  -