TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cawley,John
AU  - Heckman,James
AU  - Vytlacil,Edward
TI  - Understanding the Role of Cognitive Ability in Accounting for the       Recent Rise in the Economic Return to Education
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6388
PY  - 1998
Y2  - January 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6388
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6388.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John Cawley
3M24 MVR Hall
Department of Policy Analysis and Management
and Department of Economics
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853
Tel: 607/255-0952
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: jhc38@cornell.edu

James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu

Edward J. Vytlacil
Department of Economics
New York University
19 West 4th Street, Sixth Floor
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212/992-8682
Fax: 212/995-4186
E-Mail: vytlacil@nyu.edu
AB  - This paper examines the contribution of the rise in the return to ability to the rise in the economic return to education.  All of the evidence on this question comes from panel data sets in which a small collection of adjacent birth cohorts is followed over time.  The structure of the data creates an identification problem that makes it impossible to identify main age and time effects and to isolate all possible age-time interactions.  In addition, many education-ability cells are empty due to the stratification of ability with educational attainment.  These empty cells or identification problems are literature and produce a variety of different estimates.  We test and reject widely used linearity assumptions invoked to identify the contribution of the return to ability on the return to schooling. Using nonparametric methods find little evidence that the rise in the return to education is centered among the most able.
ER  -