TY - JOUR AU - Murnane,Richard J. AU - Willett,John B. AU - Levy,Frank TI - The Growing Importance of Cognitive Skills in Wage Determination JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 5076 PY - 1995 Y2 - March 1995 DO - 10.3386/w5076 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5076 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5076.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Richard Murnane Graduate School of Education Harvard University 6 Appian Way - Gutman 469 Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/496-4820 Fax: 617/496-3095 E-Mail: richard_murnane@harvard.edu Frank Levy c/o Harriette Crawford Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning Building 9-517 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 E-Mail: flevy@mit.edu AB - Using data from two longitudinal surveys of American high school seniors, we show that basic cognitive skills had a larger impact on wages for 24-year-old men and women in 1986 than in 1978. For women, the increase in the return to cognitive skills between 1978 and 1986 accounts for all of the increase in the wage premium associated with post-secondary education. We also show that high school seniors' mastery of basic cognitive skills had a much smaller impact on wages two years after graduation than on wages six years after graduation. ER -